


Monster Within

by FireArrowAce



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Demon, Fantasy, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Bad At Tagging, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-13 04:17:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireArrowAce/pseuds/FireArrowAce
Summary: (One Piece AU) While on their way through the forest a small group of friends find two badly injured men. As the men recover with them, the friends soon realize that one of them is not what he seems.





	1. A bloody discovery

He was running. He was running as fast as he could. That was all he could do right now. He didn't know how long he had been running for his life. His legs ached from exhaustion and pain, but he couldn't stop. They had to get away from them. He had to get him away form that place. He could hear their shouts fade away in the distance. Good, they were losing them.

The weight on his back seemed to get heavier every minute. He dodged another tree in his path. However, his foot got caught on a root and he fell down. His friend slipped off his back and landed a few feet away from him. He groaned in pain and he tried to get up, but.. his body didn't cooperate with him anymore and the pain in his chest was getting worse. His vision blurred. No, he couldn't pass out now. They weren't safe yet!

The puddle of blood underneath their bodies only grew as the seconds passed. The sounds of their enemies was gone. They were completely alone now. One part of him was grateful for that. Another part of him was not. They weren't out of danger yet. They needed help and quick. He took a few deep breaths and tried to get up again. They couldn't die now..

* * *

It was getting dark outside and the wind was blowing through the trees. There were four people walking on a path through the forest. Three men and one woman. Two of the men were running around the others while the woman and other man talked.

"Tag, you're it!" A brown-haired teen yelled at his friend as he poked him with his finger before running off laughing. The other teen grinned and chased the other. "You better run fast, because I, the great Usopp, am the champion of tag!" He yelled at the smaller teen. They ran around the others as they played. The brown-haired teen accidentally bumped into one of his other friends as he ran away from Usopp. The blond man almost dropped the bags he was carrying. "Dammit Chopper. Look out for us, will you." The man said. "Sorry Sanji!" Chopper yelled as he continued to run around with Usopp behind him.

Sanji sighed. "Why can't they just act like their age." He said to the dark-haired woman walking next to him. The woman smiled. "I hope they don't trip over something and break their neck." She said. "Don't say things like that, Robin!" The two younger boys yelled at her as they passed the others.

Suddenly, Chopper stopped dead in his tracks. Usopp took that opportunity to jab his finger in the other's ribs. "Ha, I told you I would win! The victory is mine once again!" He exclaimed. He then noticed that the younger teen wasn't listening. Instead, he was looking in the direction the wind was coming from while sniffing the air.

"Hey, what's wrong? Are you smelling something weird?" Usopp asked the other. This wasn't the first time Chopper had smelled something the others didn't. Somehow, his nose was much better than that of an average human.

"I don't know. I thought I smelled iron or something like that. I can't smell it anymore though.." Chopper replied. When he didn't smell it for another few seconds, he figured he had just imagined it and he continued to walk. The wind started to blow harder and the teen stopped again.

"There it is again. It smells like.." The teen's eyes winden. "Blood! There must be a lot of it. Let's go take a look!" He said as he began to run in the direction of the smell. Usopp grabbed his arm, stopping him. "Wait, you don't know what's out there. There could be some kind of monster lurking around!" He told the younger teen.

"Hey, what are you two doing?" Sanji asked as he noticed the younger men staring into the forest. "Chopper said he smelled blood coming from that direction." Usopp said as he pointed in the direction Chopper said the smell came from. "Maybe someone is trying to hide a body there." Robin said, sending chills down the others spines. "I want to go and see where the smell is coming from. If there is someone hurt out there we must help them." Chopper said to the others. Sanji shrugged. "Well, it wouldn't hurt to go and see if someone needs our help." He said. The others nodded. They then started to follow Chopper into the forest.

* * *

They had been walking for almost ten minutes now without finding anything. It was getting darker and colder. There were thunderclouds in the sky and every now and then a lightning bolt would light up the night.

"I think we should turn back and go home. There is nothing out here." Usopp said. "But the scent is still there. It's getting even stronger!" The younger teen exclaimed. Usopp sighed. "If you say so.." He said as he continued to follow the other.

"I think Chopper might be right after all." Robin suddenly said. The others stopped and looked at her. "What do you mean Robin?" Sanji asked. She pointed in the distance. "Over there. I can see people lying on the ground. They seem pretty lifeless." She replied. They all looked in the direction Robin was pointing, but they could barley see anything in the dark. The lightning once again lighted the dark forest and, sure enough, they could see two people lying on the forest floor.

They ran towards the bodies on the ground. When they were close enough they could see that it were two men. They were both laying face-down on the ground in a puddle of blood. "Hey, are you ok?" Usopp hesitantly asked, even though he knew it was a stupid question. Of course they were not ok. They were lying unconscious in a puddle of probably their own blood.

Chopper ran forward to the men and knelt down next to the closest one. He turned the man on his back and was shocked at what he saw. His clothes were ripped and there was a huge cut on his chest running from his left shoulder to his right hip. His left eye was bleeding badly too. "Oh my god, what happened to him?" Chopper asked no one in particular.

Sanji had gone to the other man and had turned him around too. He looked even worse than the other one. He had a big X-shaped wound on his chest that was bleeding really bad. "He's barley alive." Sanji said after checking the man's pulse. Chopper did the same to the man in front of him. "This one is alive too, but he's badly injured. They need help and fast. We should take them to our house." The teen said.

"Why don't we take them to the hospital?" Usopp asked. "The hospital is too far away and we have a infirmary." Chopper said. "And if it was a person who did this to them, and is still after them, they might go look by the hospitals." Robin added. "B-but they could be bad guys! We don't know anything about them. They could be criminals!" Usopp yelled. Chopper was getting annoyed. "If they're bad guys we'll deal with that later. We don't have time to argue!"

Sanji and Chopper moved to pick up the injured men. Chopper tried to lift the larger male, but didn't succeed. Sanji picked up the other man easily. "Damn, he's so light. When did he last eat?" The blond man muttered. He looked at the younger teen, who was still trying to lift the other man. He then walked over to Usopp. "Can you carry him? Then I can carry the other one since I'm the strongest out of us." He said. Usopp backed up. "N-no, I-I can't stand that much b-blood." He said while covering his mouth with his hands.

"I will carry him." Robin said as she walked up to Sanji. "But Robin, you don't need to. You'll get your hands covered in blood." The blond man said. Robin ignored him and took the injured man from Sanji's hands.

The blond man sighed in defeat and walked over to Chopper and lifted the other man off the ground. There were three swords, which he hadn't noticed before, hanging on the man's waist, adding extra weight to the already heavy load in his arms. "Usopp, can you take these swords with you?" He asked his long-nosed friend. The curly-haired teen nodded and took the swords.

"Let's get going. They need treatment fast. Also, the others will be wondering where we are right now." Chopper said. He had picked up the bags Sanji and Robin had been carrying earlier. They had just come back from their shopping trip in the city. They lived about three miles away from the nearest city in a mansion in the middle of the woods. It had been build by one of their friends.

"Y-yeah, let's go. It's getting darker too. I don't want to stay here much longer." Usopp said. At that moment it started to rain too. "Dammit, why now.." Sanji cursed. They all started to run, all except Usopp.

The curly-haired teen's eyes had caught sight of a hat laying on the ground. He grabbed it just before the wind could blow it away. It was an old strawhat.

"Usopp, hurry up!" Chopper yelled behind him. "I'm coming!" The older teen yelled back. He stood up and began to run. The strawhat was still him his hand for some reason.

They started to run the last few hundred meters to their house.

* * *

"Damn, where are they? They should be home by now. What's taking them so long?" A red-haired woman said as she looked at the clock for the fifth time. She and two of her friends were doing their own things until they realized that their other friends were not home yet and it started to get dark.

"I'm sure they're fine Nami. They're not push-overs you know." One of the two men said. "I agree with Franky. They will probably walk in any minute now." The other man said. Nami sighed. "I guess you're right. I just hope they didn't spend too much money on useless things."

At that moment the front door slammed open. They could hear Chopper yell something and the others replied. The three of them looked at each other and then went to look what was going on. The opened the door of the hallway and stared at the sight before them. Sanji and Robin were carrying two strangers in their arms. The strangers, two men, appeared to be bleeding heavily since blood was dripping from their bodies.

"Franky, Nami, Brook, out of the way! We need to go to the infirmary!" Chopper yelled as he, Sanji and Robin ran past them through the hallway to the sick bay. The three of them watched as they disappeared in the small room. Their eyes fell on the trail of blood coating the carpet beneath their feet. They then looked at Usopp, who was still catching his breath at the doorway.

"Usopp? What the hell is going on?" Nami asked the curly-haired teen. Usopp, who was finally able to breathe properly again, looked up at the trio who were looking really confused and disturbed. "I guess I'll have to explain then.."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just the first chapter of a still unfinished story originally posted on Fanfiction.net. I will probably upload one chapter a day until I'm up to date with the story on fanfiction. After that I will upload a new chapter whenever I have one ready. I hope you enjoy!


	2. Saving two strangers

"Lay them down on the beds." Chopper instructed. Robin and Sanji did what them was told. The room they were in was small and could barley fit all the people. There were two beds, a desk, a small table, few drawers and some medical equipment. Man, were they glad they placed that second bed a few weeks ago after an incident that caused two of their friends to get injured and needed to stay in the infirmary. 

Chopper looked in his drawers to find all the equipment they would need. He found two scissors and gave them to the other two. "Here, I need you to cut the clothes off their chests so they don't get in our way." He said. He himself started to fill a bucket with water. Sanji and Robin cut the already torn shirts of the two men and removed them. The wounds looked really bad and all the dirt on them didn't make it any better.

The doctor moved towards the unconscious men with the bucket of water and some rags. He set the bucket down in between the beds. He gave the others both a rag and took one of himself. "We need to clean off some of the dirt in and near the wounds." Chopper said as he started to clean the wound of the smaller male. His friends began to help him clean the men. 

Chopper suddenly stopped and turned to face the others. "I haven't asked if you two are ok with doing this. If you don't want to help you can leave now. There's probably going to be a lot of blood and I understand-" Sanji cut him off. "Chopper, if we didn't want to do this, we would have said so. Besides, you can't do all of this on your own. You need our help." He said and Robin nodded in agreement. Chopper gave a small smile. "Alright, let's get to work then." He said as he turned back to the task at hand and continued to clean. 

After they cleaned the wounds, Chopper grabbed some medical creme for on the wounds and rubber gloves so the wounds wouldn't get infected. The creme should help stop the bleeding too. He started to apply the creme on the cut on the larger male's eye. He had given the other two some gloves too and they started to apply the substance on the cut on the man's chest. While doing this Robin took the opportunity to check the men for other injuries. Her eye fell on the ripped pants of the male. She moved away from the cut on his chest and took a look at his legs. She could see blood coming from his legs and grabbed one of the scissors they'd used a few minuted ago to cut off a bit of the pant leg. 

"Chopper, he has two more cuts on his legs. It looks like someone wanted to cut off his feet." She said. The doctor finished applying the creme on the cut on his eye and walked over to Robin to see the injuries. "You're right. Those are some nasty cuts. Could you clean them and put the creme on them?" He asked and the black-haired woman nodded. The doctor went back to the man's head.

After examining the cut on the man's eye better the teen grimaced. "I don't know if I can save his eye. Whomever attacked his cut right through his eyelid and made a cut on his cornea. The chance he may never see with this eye is big." He said. "You did what you could Chopper. If you can't save it, no one can." Sanji said. 

They had now finished applying the creme on the first man's wounds. Chopper grabbed another creme and gave it to Robin. "You and Sanji go and apply this creme on the other man's wound. He needs an other creme since his wound looks a lot like it was burned into his skin. I will stitch the wounds here." He said to his friends. 

The doctor grabbed the things he needed and started to stitch the wounds. He did the big cut first. After that he went to the legs and stitched them up too. He used smaller stitched for the eye since it wasn't a really big cut. 

He had just finished the last stitch as Sanji spoke to him. "Chopper, this one seems to have trouble breathing properly. What should we do?" He said. The doctor looked at the man and saw that Sanji was right. The man was breathing slow and a bit ragged. "We should probably hook him to a breathing machine." Chopper said and went to get it. He installed the breathing machine and hooked the man up. "I hope this helps." He said. 

Sanji and Robin had finished putting the creme on the wound. "You two are going to bandage the larger man's wounds. The bandages are on the desk." The doctor said to his friends. They nodded and did what them was told. Chopper looked at the smaller male's wound. The big X-shaped wound looked really bad. The skin was burned away, almost showing the mussels underneath. 

'There isn't much I can do besides applying bandages. There is too little skin to try and cover up the wound. Good thing the bleeding stopped 'cause I don't think there's much blood left in him.' Chopper thought as he looked at the pale man in front of him. He grabbed some bandages and started to apply them. 

After the three of them were done with the bandages, they attached both men to blood sacks to get some of the blood they lost back into them. The doctor always had some blood sacks of each blood type in his office in a refrigerator. They then covered them in sheets and Chopper hooked the men to heart monitors.

"Alright, I think we're done now. There isn't much we can do except wait." Chopper said as he removed his gloves. The others did that too and then turned to leave, but saw that the teen wasn't coming with them. 

"Chopper, you're not coming?" Robin asked. The doctor shook his head. "No, I have to clean things up here and I have to keep watch in case something happens." He said. "Okay, I'll bring you something to drink. You've earned that, doctor." Sanji said. Chopper started to do some kind of dance and said something along the lines of "Calling me a doctor doesn't make me happy you jerk!". Sanji and Robin then left the infirmary and returned to the others.

* * *

"So, if I'm right, Chopper smelled blood and you all went to look where it came from. Then you found two injured men in the middle of the woods and took them with you." Nami said. Usopp nodded. "Are you sure that's what happened? You're not lying again?" She asked. Usopp groaned. "No! Why won't you believe me!" He all but yelled.

"Hey long nose, don't yell at Nami!" Sanji yelled at him as he and Robin entered the room. Everyone turned to look at them. "Hey Sanji, Robin, where is Chopper?" Usopp asked. Robin took a seat on one of the couches and Sanji walked to the kitchen counter to make the doctor some hot chocolate. "He is still with the men keeping an eye on them." Sanji answered. "Are they going to be ok?" Asked the long nosed teen. Sanji shrugged. "I hope so. Chopper didn't say if they're out of danger or not, but I think they're going to survive. You should ask Chopper if you want to know for sure."

"Robin, can you tell me what happened?" Nami asked. "I think Usopp already did that Nami." The dark-haired woman said. Usopp gave Nami the 'I told you' look, but she only shrugged.

"So," Franky spoke up. "What are we gonna do when they wake up. Let them stay here for a while so they can heal?" He asked. Everyone looked at each other. "That's a good question. I guess we could let them stay here for a while if they want. It's not like we don't have enough room or something." Nami said. The others agreed. 

"Well, I'm going to give Chopper his drink. I'll be right back. I'll start preparing dinner when I return." Sanji said and then left the room. "Wait, I'm coming with you." Usopp said and followed the other man out of the room. 

The others watched them leave. Nami turned to face Robin and smiled. "So, what did you buy?"

* * *

Chopper was putting the last of his used equipment away when Sanji and Usopp walked into the room. "Here, I have some hot chocolate for you." Sanji said and gave the cup to the teen. Chopper thanked him and took a sip from his drink. 

"So, Chopper. Do you think they're going to survive?" Usopp asked his friend. The doctor nodded. "Yeah, I think so. They're going to be fine if nothing changes. I'm still going to stay here to be sure though." He said as he looked at the two sleeping men on the beds. Usopp thought and had an idea. "Hey I still have those unused security cameras. I can install one in this room so you can watch them while you're not here. Then you can be with us and don't have to be alone here. Besides, I'm still not sure if we can trust those guys. They can be bad guys, or one of them is. Hey, what if they were fighting against each other. Shouldn't we separate them?" Usopp said.

"No, they're not each other's enemies. The larger man had swords with him and the wound on the other man is definitely not caused by a sword. The back of the shirt of the larger man was also covered in blood even though he didn't have any wounds there. I think he was carrying the other man on his back to get away from someone." Chopper said. His eyes were focused on the smaller male. 

"I'm going back to the others. See you there." Sanji said. He walked to the door and left the room. Chopper didn't answer. He was still looking at the smaller and probably younger male on one of the beds. He looked a bit troubled.

"Something wrong Chopper?" Usopp asked. Chopper took his eyes of the man and looked at his friend. "What?" He asked, not having heard his friend the first time. "What's wrong Chopper? It's nothing for you to zone out like that." The curly haired teen asked his friend. "Oh, it's nothing. It's just.." Chopper looked back at the small man on the bed.

"C'mon, you can tell me." Usopp told him. Chopper sighed and looked back at him. "The smaller one. I.. I sense something weird about him. Something.. dangerous.. But it's not dangerous at the same time. It's.. really strange." He said. Usopp looked at the man on the bed. "Maybe you're right, Usopp. Maybe they are bad guys." Chopper said.

Usopp sighed. "Well, if they turned out to be bad guys we'll just kick them out. They don't have weapons now. I hid the swords in my workshop. They can't really harm us now, right?" He said to the younger teen. 

"Well, I'm going to get those cameras and install them and then you can come sit with us. How does that sound?" Usopp told the other teen. Chopper nodded. "I'll be right back." Usopp said and left the room. Chopper watched him leave and then looked back at the men on the beds. More specifically, the smaller one of the two. He frowned. 'But still..

..what are you?'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know much about medical stuff, so it can be that something in this chapter doesn't make sense of isn't correct.   
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Zoro

Almost four days had passed since they found the injured men. Usopp had installed a camera in the infirmary so Chopper could keep an eye on them with his tablet. Not much had changed about their condition. Chopper and Robin had changed their bandages three times now to check if the wounds weren't getting infected and to replace the old bandages with new.

The other inhabitants continued their normal lives. They couldn't really do anything about the situation. Some of them had been given some instructions for when the men would wake up. Chopper had told Sanji, who was the cook, what kind of food to make for the men and had asked Nami to search for some new clothes because the clothes the men were wearing were ripped and covered in dried-up blood. Franky had prepared two rooms in case the men wanted to stay for some time.

Usopp was still reminding his friends that they might be bad guys and that they had to be careful when they woke up. The others had agreed to keep their guard up because they didn't know anything about the men.

Then finally, after almost four days, something changed. One of the men woke up.

* * *

Chopper, Usopp, Brook and Sanji were sitting in the living room doing their own thing. Some of their other friends had gone shopping (again) and the others were spread across the house. Chopper and Sanji were both reading a book (Chopper a medicine book and Sanji a cooking book) and Usopp and Brook were chatting with each other while Brook was writing a new song. He was a musician after all.

Chopper's tablet was lying on the table in front of him. He checked at least once in the five minutes to see if anything happened. When he looked again his eyes widen. The larger man was awake. He was looking around in the room, probably wondering where he was.

The doctor jumped up, startling the others in the room. "What's wrong Chopper? Something happened?" Sanji asked. Chopper showed him and the other two his tablet. "So, one of them woke up. Finally." Sanji said as he studied the man.

"I'm going to him. You come too Sanji." The teen said. Sanji nodded and the two of them walked to the door. Usopp stood up. "I want to come too." He said as he walked towards the other two. Chopper stopped him. "No, I don't want more people to come with me. We don't want to overwhelm him, do we?" The doctor said. The curly-haired teen sighed and returned to his place next to the musician. "Tell the others when you see them." Chopper said as he and Sanji left the room.

* * *

Chopper slowly opened the door to the infirmary. The man, who was sitting on the side of his bed, immediately stood up and turned around. He had detached himself from the heart monitor and other medical stuff. He instinctively moved his hand to his hip to grab his swords, only to realize that they weren't there. He took a defensive pose next to the bed of the other man.

"Hey, calm down. We won't harm you." Chopper said while showing his empty hands. Sanji, too, showed the man that he didn't have a weapon on him. The man seemed to relax a little bit.

The doctor slowly walked towards the man. The man followed his movements with his eye, but didn't move. Chopper stopped a few feet before the man. The man studied the younger man and then relaxed some more when he saw that the teen was harmless. He did keep his guard up though.

Chopper then began to speak to the man. "I'm Chopper. You are at our house in the infirmary. I'm a doctor and I treated your wounds." He said. The man looked over Chopper's shoulder at Sanji, who was still standing in the doorway.

Sanji took the hint. "I'm Sanji. I'm a cook. And just so you know, we won't hurt you unless you hurt one of us." He said to the man. The man nodded and seemed to relax a little more. "I'm Zoro. Thanks for helping us." The man, Zoro, said.

The doctor walked to his desk and grabbed a clipboard and a pen. He turned to face Zoro. "Alright, I'm going to ask a few questions. First, does it hurt anywhere?" He asked the man. The man was taken aback at the sudden question, but answered anyway. "Well, my eye and chest hurt. The pain isn't that bad though." Zoro replied. "And your legs?" The doctor asked. "They don't really hurt, but it itches a bit." The man said as he sat down again on his bed, his eye occasionally switching between Sanji and Chopper.

The doctor wrote down something. "Are you nauseous? Do you have a headache?" Chopper questioned Zoro. Zoro shook his head. "I was a little dizzy when stood up, but that's gone now." He said. The young doctor wrote down what the man had said. "Ok, last question. Do you have anything else to tell me about your state?" Chopper asked. The man shook his head. "I don't think so. I'm a bit hungry and thirsty. Could I have something to eat and drink?" He asked. Chopper nodded and turned to face Sanji. "You can do that, right? And remember what I told you about the food." The teen said to the cook. Sanji nodded and disappeared from the doorway.

After Sanji left the man looked at the other man on the bed. "How is he?" He asked. Chopper followed his gaze. "Is he your friend?" The doctor asked. Zoro nodded. "He was badly injured, but he is going to be fine. He could wake up any moment. Also, I think you can walk around if you want. You don't have to be afraid you will reopen the wounds if you're careful." Chopper said.

Zoro tore his gaze off of his friend and looked at the doctor again. "How many people live here? It's not only you and the cook, isn't it?" Zoro asked. "No, we live here with five other people. They are all really nice. Some of them aren't here right now." The teen told the other man.

They both didn't say anything for a moment. The only thing sound in the room was the steadily bleeping from the heart monitor from the other man. "How long was I out?" Zoro suddenly asked after about one minute of silence. "You were unconscious for almost four days, which is understandable seeing the damage you took." Chopper replied.

Sanji returned with a bowl and a glass of water. Zoro took the glass and emptied it in less than five seconds. The cook took the empty glass and replaced it with the bowl. There was soup in it. "I made Sanji add some painkillers to the soup. I don't want you to be in pain, even though you said that it didn't hurt that bad." The doctor said.

The man took the spoon that was sticking out of the bowl and started to consume the soup. He first took a small spoonful of the food to taste it. It didn't take much time for him to realize the soup was amazing. He started to eat at a fast speed. Sanji smiled. His food was the best.

"Hey slow down! I know you haven't eaten in a few days, but you'll choke if you don't slow down your pace." Chopper said to the man. Zoro slowed down a little bit, but was still eating at a fast speed.

When he finished eating he gave the bowl back to the cook. At that moment Robin entered to room. She had just returned from her shopping trip and Usopp and Brook had told her and the others who were with her that one of the men had woken up.

Zoro looked at the woman who just had entered the room. Something about the way he looked at her said that he knew who she was. "Hello, I'm Robin. I'm glad to see that you woke up." Robin said. "I'm Zoro." The man said.

"Robin, are the others back too?" Chopper asked. The dark-haired woman nodded. "They returned at the same time as I did." Chopper nodded in understanding. He turned to look at Zoro. "I don't know if you want to tell us, but we all want to know what happened that day. So, maybe you can explain it to us. You don't need to if you don't want to.." The teen said to the man. Zoro thought for a bit, then sighed. "I guess I owe you an explanation. After all, you're the ones who helped us. I'll tell you." He said.

Chopper smiled at the man. "Alright. Tell us when you're ready. You don't have to do it right away. Maybe you should rest some more." The doctor said. "Maybe that's a good idea. I'm still a bit tired." Zoro replied.

"We'll be leaving then. If you need something just shout down the hallway for me and I'll come. Have a good rest." Chopper said to the man. He, Sanji and Robin then left the room and closed the door behind them, leaving the man and his friend alone in the room.

Zoro looked at the closed door for a few seconds before sitting more comfortable on his bed. He moved his hand to his bandaged eye and touched it. His eye. It was a sacrifice he had made and he didn't regret it. He looked with his remaining eye at the man on the bed beside him.

They were alive. They made it.

His mind wandered to the people who were in the room with him just a few moments ago. Why did he trust them so easily? Sure, they didn't feel like bad people, but still.. He couldn't let his guard down. You never know what they can do.

He has to be careful. They can not know about his friend. He has to make up a believable story. He can't let all their effort go to waste. Not after all their sacrifices.

Not after he died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading!


	4. Their story

It was early in the morning when Zoro woke up. He rubbed his eye and shifted into a sitting position in his bed. He looked around in the room for any signs of life besides him. His friend still hadn't woken up yet.

About half a minute had passed since he woke up when Chopper walked into the room. He looked at Zoro. "You're awake. Good morning." He said and gave a small smile. Zoro greeted him back. "How are you feeling? Same as yesterday?" The young doctor asked. Zoro nodded.

"Alright, do you want to eat and drink something?" Chopper asked. "Yeah, I would like something to eat. Thank you." The man said. The teen walked to the door to go get some food, but then stopped and turned around. "You can come eat with me in the kitchen if you want. I'm going to eat there because some of my friends are there too. I can also bring some food to you here." He said. Zoro thought about it and then stood up. "I'll go to the kitchen with you." He said. Chopper nodded and led the other man to the kitchen.

* * *

When they arrived in the kitchen there were three people present already. Zoro recognized two of them, Sanji and Robin. The third person was a tall, lanky man with an afro. The three looked up and stared at the men who just walked into the room. Zoro was a little uncomfortable because of the stares, but didn't say anything of it.

"You can sit here." Chopper said to the man next to him as he pulled one of the chairs back for him to sit. Zoro sat down on the chair and Chopper went to sit next to him. Sanji was already preparing breakfast for the two of them. He knew the reason why they went to the kitchen was to eat.

Zoro looked at the people in the room as he waited for his breakfast. His eye stopped on the man with the afro sitting across of him. He already knew all of them, except for him.

The man noticed his stare. "Oh, I haven't introduced myself yet. How rude. I'm Brook." The man said and stuck his hand out over the table. Zoro grabbed the hand and shook it. "I'm Zoro." He said as he pulled his hand back. "Pleased to meet you, Zoro." Brook said.

A comfortable silence fell in the kitchen. It didn't take Sanji long finish making breakfast for Chopper and Zoro. After only a few minutes they both were eating.

When they were almost done an other member of the group of friends walked in. This time it was a girl with long orange hair.

The first one to notice her were Zoro and Sanji. The latter immediately started to swoon around her, greeting her good morning. Apparently, this happened very often since no one in the room looked surprised.

The girl noticed Zoro sitting at the table and greeted him. "Hello, I'm Nami. Nice to meet you." She said as she gave a small wave. Zoro introduced himself as well before he resumed eating. Nami sat at the table and Sanji ran to make her some breakfast.

One by one the rest of the inhabitants of the house came to the kitchen to get some breakfast. Each of them introduced themselves to Zoro before setting themselves at the table. They seem like nice people, but Zoro kept an eye on them just in case.

After diner most of the people left the room. Chopper took Zoro back to the infirmary to get his bandages changed. While he was doing this the doctor asked the man if he was ready to tell him and the others why and who injured him and his friend this bad. Zoro had already said he would tell so it's best to just get over with it as soon as possible. Chopper was glad he wanted to tell them and after he finished bandaging him up he left to get the group together in the living room.

The living room was really big. It had a lot of couches and a big aquarium with all kinds of fish. When they were all there, everyone looked at Zoro expectantly. He sighed and scratched his head. "Well, I guess I'm going to tell you now." He said and started to talk.

"We were chased and almost killed by the Government-" Usopp interrupted him. "So you are a bad guy! I told you guys they were." He said as he hid behind Sanji.

Zoro's eye twitched in annoyance. "No, we're not bad guys. Being a criminal isn't the only reason people get killed by the Government. Isn't that right, Nico Robin?" The said woman flinched slightly at the mention of her full name. She quickly recovered. "You're right. There are quite a lot of reasons the Government would kill you for. You all know why they wanted me gone." Robin said and the others nodded.

Robin nodded to Zoro to continue his story. "Me and my friend, Luffy, both were employees at a place owned by the Government. I worked there as a security guard and he as a cleaner and messenger. He and I became close friends there. I have worked there for about four years and Luffy worked there a little longer then me.

In the time we worked there we both got a bit suspicious about the actions of the Government. This was meanly because of the things that stood in the letters that Luffy had to bring around in the building. We had opened a few of them out of curiosity. In those letters they talked about big things that they didn't publish, like whole villages burning down and people disappearing.

One day they gave Luffy the job of cleaning the room where they stored all their important documents. They sent me to keep an eye on him so he wouldn't look into the documents. We both decided to do just that. All of our thoughts about the Gouverment were confirmed and we decided that we wanted to quit working there.

Unfortunately, they somehow found out and two days later they attacked us when we were about to head home. We tried to fight them, but they were with too many. We had to run for our lives through the forest to try and lose them. We barely escaped with our lives."

Zoro finished telling his story and looked at the others for their reaction. Most of them looked a bit stunned by hearing his story. Robin looked a bit sad to know that more people had been hurt because of knowing too much information about the world and the Government.

"I'm really thankful that you found us. We would have died without your help." Zoro said and bowed his head slightly. "The one you should thank is Chopper. He is the one who knew that someone was in trouble when we walked through the forest and he is the one who treated your wounds." Sanji said. Zoro looked at Chopper and thanked him, making the teen do a weird kind of dance telling him to shut up. He looked really happy hearing it though.

"I don't get why the Government would do such a thing. A normal person with common sense wouldn't tell anyone since that would probably cost them their life." Franky said. Zoro agreed. "Yeah, it's not like I would tell anyone this. I wouldn't do me any good and Luffy isn't even able to tell anyone about it." He said.

"What do you mean by that? Why can't Luffy tell anyone?" Chopper asked.

"Luffy had an accident a few years ago. He lost his ability to speak. He has created his own sign language, but almost no one can understand that." Zoro said. The others were surprised by hearing this.

"He can't talk? Not at all?" Usopp asked. Zoro nodded. "He can talk a little, but it hurts when he tries. He can make some sounds that sound like a laugh or something like that, but that's it." He said.

"It's sad to know that something like that can happen to someone so young. How old are you two anyway?" Brook asked the man. "I'm twenty-one and Luffy is nineteen." Zoro said. "Then you're the same age as Sanji. But is your friend really nineteen? He looks younger than that." Robin said. "I know. That's what I thought when I first met him." Zoro said.

There was a small silence before Zoro spoke again. "There is still a question on my mind. I had three swords with me when I last checked. I suppose you took them. Could I get them back? They are really dear to me." He said.

"They are in my room. We decided to keep them there in case you were hostile. I don't know if we should give them back just yet. Even though you just told us your story, we don't know you that well and we don't want to take any risks." The curly haired teen said.

Zoro sighed. "I understand. I would have done the same." He said and moved his hand through his hair. "One last question. Did any of you see a strawhat? Luffy is quite attached to it and it might be needed to calm him down if he freaks out after waking up." He asked.

The others found the 'freaking out' part a bit weird, but didn't say anything of it. Usopp was once again the person to speak up. "You're lucky. Just when we started to run home from the forest with you guys I saw a strawhat laying on the ground. I took it with me for some reason. It's in my room with your swords. Should I get it for you?" He said.

Zoro nodded. "That would be great, thank you." He said. Usopp stood up and went to get it for him. Zoro's eye then fell on a tablet lying on Chopper's lap. The tablet was on and showed the infirmary.

"What's that?" He asked the teen. The doctor followed his gaze and saw what he meant. "Oh this? With this I can keep an eye on the sick bay. It shows me when something happens, like when you first woke up." He said.

'So that's why they arrived so quick after I woke up.' Zoro thought.

Usopp returned with the hat in his hand. He gave it to Zoro. The man thanked him and inspected the hat for damage. Luffy would be upset if anything happened to it. Luckily, the hat didn't sustain any damage.

"Oh, before I forget! I have a question. Do you want to stay here while you're healing? I can prepare rooms for you two to stay in." Franky said to Zoro. The other man nodded. "I'm fine with that and I think Luffy is too. I don't think it's a good idea to go back home in this state. Thank you for your offer.

One thing, is it possible for us to sleep in the same room? I don't think my friend likes being alone in a room in a house full strangers." Zoro replied. Franky nodded and wrote something down on a notepad he pulled out from somewhere. "Ok, I'll take care of it." He said as he put the notepad away.

"Hey Zoro, how about I show you around the house? We don't want you to get lost, do we?" Chopper said. Zoro nodded and he and Chopper stood up, Zoro still holding the strawhat in his hand. They then left the room, leaving the others behind.

"So, how do you guys think about them?" Usopp asked his friends once the other two had left the room. "Zoro seems like a good guy, but I don't know about that Luffy kid though. Which nineteen year old teen would be scared of strangers? Does he have social problems or something?" Franky said.

The others seemed to agree with the man. Usopp thought back at what Chopper had said a few days ago. About the weird feeling he had when he was near the smaller male. There was something strange about the young man. But what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made Luffy mute, now I feel bad.. But don't worry, I will let him regain his voice somehow.  
> Anyway, thank you all for the following my story! It means a lot to me.  
> Thanks for reading and until next time!


	5. A fearful awakening

Zoro entered the infirmary, the strawhat still in his hand. Chopper and he had just finished the tour of the house, which was really big. It almost looked like a villa. By the time they finished it was already around three o'clock in the afternoon.

The orange-haired girl, Nami, had said he could come to her for other clothes. The ones he was wearing looked like shit (his shirt was gone already so he was walking around with only bandages covering his chest and his pants was ripped and covered in dried-up blood and dirt). He had told her that he would check on Luffy first and place the hat on the desk because he didn't want to carry that thing around all the time.

The man walked closer to the bed of his friend. Nothing seemed to have changed. He sighed and laid the strawhat down on Chopper's desk. He then thought about the group of people living in this house. They didn't seem that bad. Sure, it was a weird bunch, but they are nice. Well, as long as he's nice too. He knows he isn't the nicest person, but he has to stay polite to them. He can't risk them becoming an enemy. Especially not when he and Luffy were not capable of defeating them, not in this state. He has to keep Luffy safe.

He just hoped that they believed the story he told them. He couldn't tell them the real story. That's too much risk.

Zoro walked to the door. In the doorway he stopped and looked back at the other man. He hoped that he would wake up soon.

* * *

"Here, those are the clothes you and your friend can choose from. There are some old clothes from us and some new clothes we bought but never used. You're free to choose anything you want." Nami said to Zoro as she showed him a heap of clothes in one of the spare rooms. "You can change here too. I'll be downstairs." The girl said and left the room.

The man walked towards the pile of clothes and knelt down to look for something suitable. He looked through the pile for about five minutes before he settled with his choice of clothes. The first thing he grabbed was a pants what was very much the same as the one he was wearing, but then new. He also found a long dark-green coat, a red sash and a green haramaki. He decided to keep his old boots.

He put his clothes on and looked in a big mirror which stood against the wall in one of the corners of the room. He looked at himself and found that the clothes fit him well. Though, he had the feeling he was missing something.

He grabbed his old pants and felt around in the pockets. He took out a black bandanna which was wrapped around something. Opening the bandanna he grabbed three golden earrings. He hung them on his left earlobe. He wrapped the black bandanna around his left arm. He didn't remember why he had put them in his pocket to begin with, but he was glad he still had them.

He looked back in the mirror. Much better now. Deciding he had enough of clothes he exited the room. He should go back to Luffy, but.. which way to go?

* * *

_Everything is back. It has been for a while now. Not only that, but it's silent too. So silent it's almost scary._

_What is this? Is this what death is like? Dark? Silent? Cold? Is it ever going to end? ___

____

_What's that? ___

____

_Light. There is light. The comforting warmth of light. The comforting warmth of fire. His fire.. ___

____

__

_It's so close I can almost grab it, but at the same time too far away. I want him here. I need him here. ___

____

____

_The fire disappeared. It is replaced with an unbearable heat. ___

____

____

_It hurts.. ___

____

____

_I want it to end. I want it to stop. It needs to stop! ___

____

____

_Please, someone.. ___

____

____

_..help me.. ___

* * *

____

____

Chopper was walking through the house. He was looking for Zoro. He somehow had disappeared. Nami said he was in the room with clothes, but now he is gone.

He turned another corner and suddenly saw who he was looking for. The man was standing in front of a window looking outside.

"Zoro, what are you doing here?" The teen asked the older man. The man turned around to look at Chopper. "I was looking for the infirmary." Zoro answered. "The infirmary is on the ground level. This is the second floor." The doctor said. "Did you get lost?" The other man scratched the back of his head. "I'm not lost, the walls just moved." He said.

"Well, ok then. Just follow me. I'll bring you back." Chopper said and walked back in the direction of the stairs. Zoro followed the younger man down the stairs.

Suddenly, someone yelled something. Frowning, Chopper and Zoro ran the last few steps down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs stood Usopp with Chopper's tablet in his hand. He looked panicked.

"Chopper! I don't know what's happening! He suddenly started trashing around!" Usopp yelled at the doctor as he pushed the tablet in Chopper's hands. The doctor looked at the screen and gasped. The screen showed Luffy trashing in his bed. It almost looked like he was being attacked by an invisible enemy.

The doctor sprinted towards the infirmary, Zoro close behind him. Chopper opened the door and ran to the man on the bed. Luffy was trashing, his eyes were shut tight and he was breathing rapidly.

"I think he's having some kind of nightmare! He can wake up any moment, but if he keeps trashing he might open up his wounds. We have to hold him down." Chopper said. He reached to grab one of the man's arms, but Zoro stopped him.

"I think it's a better idea if you and the others stay out of this room. Luffy can't handle strangers that well and I think that a stranger holding him down isn't going to help much." Zoro said. Chopper was about to complain, but stopped himself. Zoro was right. Luffy didn't know him or anyone else in this house except for Zoro. And if what he said was true, unknown people in the room could only make the other man panic more.

Chopper nodded at the older man and left the room. "Tell me if you need help." The doctor said before closing the door and returning to the others while keeping a close look on his tablet.

Zoro looked away from the door and focused on the teen on the bed. He somehow had to stop him from trashing. He climbed on the bed and placed his knees at each side of the teen's hips. He moved his feet so that they held the other man's legs down. With his hands he grasped the flailing arms and held them down against the bed.

Luffy's head moved from left to right, almost throwing off the breathing mask on his face. His arms and legs moved too, but couldn't do much because of Zoro. Zoro remembered something and looked around in the room, searching for the camera. Seeing the device hanging above the door the man sighed in relief. He didn't have to move since his back was already blocking the camera's view of the man under him.

"Come one, Luffy. Wake up." Zoro said to the man under him, not knowing if the teen heard him or not. Luffy didn't react to his voice at all and continued to move in his grip. It pained Zoro to see his friend in such a state. But what could he do?

The movements of the teen continued for about two minutes before the body went limp. Suddenly, Luffy's eyes snapped open, wide and unfocused. Two red eyes with vertical slit pupils stared right at the man on top of him.

The atmosphere in the room changed. It was like the room got colder. It didn't feel safe. Everyone in the house felt it.

The group of people who were in the living room looking at the tablet, following every move the two made in the other room even though they couldn't really see the younger man, suddenly got the feeling of utter fear and despair. They looked at each other, some looking more scared than others. What was going on?

"Luffy," Zoro said. The red eyes focused on his only eye. Recognition flashed in the teen's eyes. He seemed to calm down at the sight of his friends face.

Zoro reached with his hand to grab the strawhat on the desk. He put it on the younger man's head. "Luffy, you need to calm down. You're fine. You're safe." Zoro said softly. The teen's breathing became less rapid. The dark atmosphere disappeared and the people in the house felt relieved.

"Right now, we're in the house of a group of people. They're not bad people. They're not from the Government. We're safe here." The older man said. Luffy flinched at the mention of other unknown people being nearby.

"Ok, Luffy. I need you to change your eyes. They don't know what you are, so they can't see you like this." Zoro said to the smaller man. The teen blinked at the man. His eyes then darkened. They were almost black, but if you looked close you could see that they were dark-red, which people could recognize as a shade of brown.

Zoro gave a small smile. He let go of the arms and legs, but stayed at his place on top of the other male. Luffy took off the annoying breathing mask and slowly looked around in the room. He took in the beds, the desk and all the medical supplies. He grimaced. Bad memories.

The teen then noticed that something was missing. Or rather, someone. The last memories he had before he lost consciousness flooded back and his eyes widen.

No, it couldn't be..

He looked at Zoro with hopeful eyes and made a few gestures with his hands.

_Where is Ace? ___

__Zoro sighed and closed his eye. He knew this question would come. He knows that Luffy remembers but doesn't want to believe it. How is he going to say it?_ _

__"He is dead, Luffy. He died when we escaped. It was his own choice. I'm sorry." He said. Luffy looked at him with wide eyes. The teen's hands started to shake, slow at first but when the seconds passed the shaking only worsened. The man made and shaking attempt to sign something, but couldn't do it. He moved one of his hands to his mouth trying to muffle a sob._ _

__Tears formed in the teen's eyes making him look even younger. More sobs were heard and the first tear streamed down Luffy's face. His hand moved away from his face and him mouth opened in an attempt to say something, but no sound came out except for the steadily growing sound of grief._ _

__Zoro looked away. He couldn't handle the sight of his best friend crying. It made him almost cry too. He had failed. He had allowed one of his friends to die. He had allowed Luffy's brother to die._ _

__He gently wrapped his arms around the weeping teen. Luffy flung his arms around the other man and his hands grasped the back of the green coat. He buried his head in the older man's shoulder and continued crying._ _

__Zoro sighed and moved one hand to the teen's head and slowly began to stroke the black hair. He didn't know how to comfort someone, but he tried his best._ _

* * *

__Everyone gathered around the tablet stared at the sight of the young man crying. It was so sad to see. It made them want to cry with him._ _

__"I wonder what happened.." Nami said quietly. Everyone heard her, but no one replied. They all thought the same._ _

__Even though they all had a weird feeling towards the smaller man they couldn't help but feel sorry for him. Whatever happened must have a great impact on the poor teen._ _

* * *

__Zoro didn't know how many minutes had passed, but it sure felt like hours. Luffy had cried himself to sleep. The only sound in the room was the steadily breathing of the teen in his arms and the bleeping of the heart monitor._ _

__He gently laid Luffy down on the bed. He wiped the remaining tears from the younger man's face. He then got off and straightened himself. Sitting like that for so long really wasn't good for his back._ _

__The door opened slightly and Chopper peeked inside. Zoro looked at him and nodded for him to come in. The doctor opened the door more and slowly walked inside._ _

__"We're going to have dinner soon. Do you want to eat with us?" The teen asked. Zoro nodded. He looked one last time at Luffy before following the young doctor out the room._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luffy woke up (for a little while at least). Yeey! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, even though it was a little sad at the end.  
> Thank you so much for reading!


	6. Good people

The room was completely dark when Luffy woke up. He had a bad headache and his eyes were a bit sore. He waited a few moments to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Once he could see a little bit in the dark, he looked around in the room. It was the same room he was in when he had first woken up. Zoro was sleeping on the bed next to him.

The burning pain in his chest made him clinch the bandages covering him. The mark underneath the bandages reminded him of what he had lost. Of who he had lost.  
Ace was gone. He would never see him again. Not only that, but they didn't even have a body to bury. It all happened so fast. It was all his fault.

Luffy's breathing became faster. New tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. The teen tried to hold it in. He wasn't going to cry again. Crying wasn't going to help. His hand grasped the rim of his strawhat that was still on top of his head.

There was nothing he could do. The dead can't be brought back to life. He was all alone now. His brothers were gone.

"Luffy? You awake?" Zoro's voice asked from the bed beside him. The younger man turned to face his friend. The other man moved in a sitting position on his bed and yawned. "I didn't expect you to wake up until tomorrow morning." He said. He flicked on the light, making the room a lot brighter.

The light momentarily blinded Luffy. He looked at his lap. Zoro had been there the whole time. He saw what happened. He knew who was to blame for the death of their friend and brother.

"Hey, if you're thinking about what happened, it's not your fault. Even if you think so. He was the one who sacrificed himself. We couldn't do anything about it." Zoro said to the other man. "And if someone was to blame for this, then it would be me. I promised I would protect you two, that I would get you both out of there. I broke that promise.."

The teen looked back at the older man. He shook his head and made some gestures with his hands.

_That's not true. You did get us out of there. You couldn't prevent what happened after that. But me.. If I had just moved out of the way it wouldn't have happened..._  
__  
The silence returned in the room for a little while. Both men didn't say anything. They had been so close to getting out of there. They almost succeeded with Zoro's help. Why did it have to end like that?

"I guess we both are at least a little responsible, but it was still his decision to do it. He chose your life over his." Zoro said. "Now, let's talk about something else. Do you remember what I said yesterday?" The man said to change the subject. Luffy shook his head.

"Alright, what I told you was that we're in the house of a group of people. They don't seem like bad people. They saved us and treated our wounds. They don't know what you are yet and I think we should keep it that way." Zoro told the younger man.

Luffy nodded. He didn't want other people knowing about him either. They could turn hostile and try kill to him. Or worse, they could send him back to that place.

"You can't show them anything. That's the reason I asked you to darken your eyes like they are now. You never know how they react." Zoro continued. "We'll be staying here for a while, until we're healed enough to head out. They wanted to know what happened, so I made up a story. I should tell you so you understand what they're talking about if they ask you about it. It's not like you can answer though.."

Zoro then told Luffy what he had told the others. He was talking quietly since the others were all still sleeping. The teen listened without interrupting. At the end of the story the older man asked if the other had any questions. The teen moved his hands to sign at the other what he wanted to say.

_Not everything you told them was made-up, right? Some of the things you told them are true, like that you are a guard and that the Government chased us. ___

"That's true. I am a guard. I could tell them that without giving away anything. There are many kinds of guards working for the Government. I had to at least make the story somewhat believable by telling bits of the truth. I could tell them that the Government chased us without risking our lives. One of them is wanted by the Government, so I don't think they'd tell them that we're here." Zoro replied.

_Really? Who? ___

"Nico Robin. I don't think you know her." The teen shook his head. "She is the only survivor of a city what was destroyed by the Government. The inhabitants knew things they weren't supposed to know, so the Government decided to wipe them from existence. She was the only one to come out alive. The Government still want to dispose of her." Zoro told the younger man. Luffy looked only slightly shocked at that information. It wasn't really a surprise that the Government would do something like that.

_What happened after I passed out? ___

__"After you lost consciousness, I grabbed you and made a run for it. I ran into the forest trying to lose them, but they kept chasing us. I don't know how long I ran for, but I ran until I collapsed too. Then, I woke up here and heard that almost four days had passed. You woke up one day after me, but you weren't awake long yesterday." The older man said._ _

__Why had they been so stupid to think that it was possible to get out of there unnoticed and unscratched? They noticed the moment Luffy and Ace left their 'room'. Sure, all three of them were really strong, but they were strong too. And they were with so many. It's a miracle that at least two of them made it out alive._ _

"By the way, how do you feel? Does the wound hurt?" Zoro asked Luffy. He had totally forgotten to ask that before. He's such a bad friend. 

_My head hurts a little. The wound hurts too. It feels like it's still burning.. ___

The other man nodded in understanding. He had expected that. The wound wasn't something that would heal in one week time. He was glad the teen told him. He normally wouldn't say that he was hurt. "Should I ask the doctor to come give you some painkillers?" Zoro asked. Luffy visibly tensed at the word 'doctor' and shook his head. The older man sighed. He knew that the teen was in pain, but Luffy's bad experience with 'doctors' had made him afraid of what they would do to him.

"Luffy, please. You need it. I promise I won't let him do any harm to you." Zoro said to his friend. The teen looked down at his hands. He didn't want any doctor to be near him. But the pain, the burning feeling. He wanted that to stop.

_Fine.. ___

__Zoro gave a small smile and stood up. "Alright, I'll be back soon." He said and left the room. Luffy stared at the doorway for a few more seconds before making himself more comfortable on the bed. His hand shifted over his chest to the place where the wound was._ _

__'This can take while with his sense of direction..' He thought._ _

____

* * *

____

__

__Sanji woke up from footsteps in the hallway. He looked at his alarm clock to see how late it was. It was a little over half past four. Guessing that someone just went to the bathroom or something, he went back to sleep. However, he didn't get the chance to do that. The person in the hallway walked by a second time, then a third. By the fourth time he had enough of it and left his bed. He opened the door of his bedroom and looked for the person who awakened him from his sleep._ _

__Zoro was walking through the hallway. Sanji stared at him before tapping against the wall, making himself noticeable. The other man turned around to see who made the sound and walked over to Sanji. The man standing in the doorway had an annoyed look on his face._ _

__"What are you doing here? It's way too early to be wandering around." Sanji said to the man. "I was looking for Chopper's room, but I can't find it. Your house is like a maze." The other man answered._ _

__Sanji's visible eyebrow twitched. "Our house isn't that big. Did you get lost again? What kind of sense of direction do you have? But anyway, why do you need Chopper? Something the matter?" The blond man asked._ _

__"I was going to ask him for some painkillers for Luffy. He woke up a little while ago and his wound hurts." Zoro said to the other man. Sanji nodded in understanding. "I'll take you to his room." Sanji said and led the other man to the doctor's room, which was at the opposite side of the hallway._ _

"Here you go. I'm going back to my room. Don't get lost again." Sanji said and returned to his room. Zoro watched the man disappear in his room. He then knocked on the door of Chopper's bedroom. 

First, it stayed silent at the other side of the door. Then, after he knocked a second time, he could hear someone shift on a bed. Footsteps approached the door. The door was opened by a tired looking Chopper. The teen looked at Zoro as he rubbed his eyes. 

"Zoro? What are you doing here? Something wrong?" The young doctor asked. "Luffy woke up, but the wound on his chest hurts. He needs painkillers." Zoro said. The doctor stared at him, his sleepy brain trying to process what the other man had told him. 

Finally snapping out of it, the doctor started walking towards the stairs. "Alright, I'll get some for him. Let's go." He said. Zoro followed the younger man downstairs. When they reached the infirmary, Zoro walked in first, letting Luffy know that the doctor was coming in. 

Luffy looked up and at the door as his friend walked in. "Luffy, I brought the doctor with me." He said. The teen felt panic rise in his body as a young man walked into the room. The man, probably a little younger than Luffy himself, smiled and gave a small wave. 

"Hey, I'm Chopper. Nice to meet you." Chopper said. Luffy felt himself calm down a little. Chopper didn't look or act like any of the other doctors he'd met. Somehow, he already trusted the young man even though he hadn't even properly met him. He didn't understand. Just seconds ago he had felt scared and ready to defend himself from incoming needles and scalpels. He could feel that the teen wasn't bad. Maybe not all doctors were bad. 

Chopper moved to one of the cabinets and pulled out a small bottle. He opened it and took out a pill. He put the bottle away and turned to face the teen on the bed. "Luffy, do you think you can swallow this?" He asked. Luffy tensed a bit at the sight of the pill, but pushed his fear down. If he wanted the pain to go away he had to take it. He nodded. 

The young doctor filled a glass with water and gave both the glass and pill to the young man. "You should drink some water before or with the pill. Your throat can be a bit dried out from not drinking for a few days." Chopper said. Luffy drank half of the water before he put the pill in his mouth. He took some more water and swallowed the pill whole. 

Chopper asked the teen a few more questions before deciding that Luffy didn't need any further help that night. "Alright, that should do it. I should probably check the wound and change the bandages too, but that can wait until tomorrow. I'm going back to bed to catch some more sleep. Goodnight!" Chopper said. The doctor then left the room. 

Zoro sat down on his bed. "See? That wasn't that bad, was it?" He said to his friend. Luffy nodded and gave a small smile. He then yawned. He was still tired. He signed at his friend. 

_Chopper doesn't feel bad. He is a nice person._

Zoro smiled as well. "I'm glad. It would've been a real pain in the ass if you freaked out or something. I know you don't like doctors." He said. The teen's smile faltered a bit as he remembered some of the other 'doctors'. He then smiled brighter. 

_I don't know why, but I trust him. He feels nice, like Shanks.._

Zoro looked at Luffy in surprise. Shanks was the person Luffy admired the most, excluding his brothers of course. He had told him that Shanks was the nicest person he knew. The teen rarely ever said that someone felt like Shanks. If he said that, then the person he was talking about had to be a good person. The only ones he ever mentioned to feel like that were he and Makino. Maybe these people were indeed good. 

_I wonder how he's doing. I still need to give him his hat back._

"I'm sure he's fine. Now, we should probably sleep some more too." The older man said. Luffy nodded and laid down in his bed. Zoro turned off the light and laid down too. "Goodnight Luffy." He said and closed his eyes.

* * *

They woke up a few hours later. It wasn't long before breakfast. They were talking (signing with hands in Luffy's case) when someone knocked on the door. The door opened and Chopper looked inside.

_______"Hey, good morning. Is it okay if I come in?" He asked. Zoro looked at Luffy for the answer. The teen nodded tor the doctor to come in. Chopper smiled and made his way over to the two men. "We're having breakfast in half an hour. Luffy, I would like to change your bandages if you're comfortable with it." The doctor said._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______Luffy didn't like the idea of a doctor touching him, but he knew that he only wanted to help him. Once again, he pushed his fears down and nodded at the doctor. Chopper got some new bandages ready and started to remove the old ones. The thinner the layer of bandages on the wound, the redder the bandages became. The last few layers were covered in dried-up blood._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______Once all the bandages were gone they could see the damage done to the teen. The big X-shaped wound was burned into the skin. Old blood was on and around the wound. Zoro grimaced as he saw it. It looked really painful. Luffy looked down at his chest, an unreadable look on his face. This is what he got for being not strong enough, for being too weak._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______"The wound looks a lot better than the last time I saw it. You're a fast healer. But it will leave a scar behind, that's for sure." Chopper said as he inspected the wound. Deciding that he should probably clean some of the old blood off first, he grabbed a clean rag and some water. He gently started to remove the dried-up blood from the teen's chest. Luffy winched when the rag came too close to his wound. "Sorry." The doctor apologized._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______Chopper finished removing most of the blood and re-bandaged the wound. Seconds after Chopper finished, Sanji's voice echoed through the house. Breakfast was ready. "You two can go, I'll clean this up. Luffy, be careful with that wound of yours. " Chopper said._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______Zoro and Luffy walked towards the door. Luffy hadn't met the other inhabitants of the house yet. He was slightly afraid of meeting new people since most people he met in that place were bad, but Zoro said that they were good. He trusted his friend's judgement._ _ _ _ _ _ _

* * *

_______They walked until they arrived in the kitchen. There were five people sitting at the table and one standing near the kitchen counter. They were all eating. They looked at the two as they walked in. Luffy got a little uncomfortable as they stared at him. He didn't feel any hostility though._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______They sat down next to each other at the end of the table. A blond man placed two bowls of soup in front of them. Luffy looked at the man's face. There was something strange about it. He signed something with his hands._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______The man looked confused. "What does he say?" He asked Zoro. The green-haired man smirked. "He said that you have a weird eyebrow." He replied. The man's curly eyebrow twitched in annoyance. "Really? That's the first thing you say?" He said. "Anyway, I'm Sanji. Nice to meet you." Luffy gave a small smile._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______The others introduced themselves too before they continued to eat their breakfast. Chopper had walked in and was now eating as well. The soup was simple, but is was the best food Luffy had ever tasted._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______When he was done he asked if he could have some more soup (this was translated by Zoro of course). Sanji was baffled at how fast Luffy had finished. The teen sure had an appetite. "Sure, there is enough." Sanji answered. He took Luffy's bowl and refilled it. The teen started to eat this at a fast pace too. He finished at the same time the others did with their first bowl._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______After everyone finished eating (some after one bowl soup, others two and Luffy four) everyone went to do their own thing. Some stayed behind in the kitchen._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______Luffy signed something at the cook with smile on his face. "He said that the soup was the best he ever had." Zoro translated. Sanji smiled and thanked him for the compliment. Nami then walked up to the young man and said that he could come with her for new clothes. That's when Luffy realized that he didn't have a shirt on and that his pants was as good as ruined._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______He and Zoro followed the girl upstairs to the room with clothes. When she left the teen started looking through the pile of clothes. He took out blue shorts, a long-sleeved red cardigan and a yellow sash. He also found some sandals at the side of the heap._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______Some people would probably find their choice of clothes weird compared to normal people, but it wasn't so strange considered that one of the girls walked around in a bikini top and one of the men in speedos._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______Luffy tugged off his gray with blood covered shorts and threw it on the ground. He then put on the clothes he had chosen, his strawhat completed the look. He had left the cardigan open so it wouldn't irritate his wound. He looked into the mirror and was shocked to see how much he had grown. Was it really that long ago since the last time he saw his own reflection?_ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______"You don't seem afraid of them. I suppose they all feel good?" Zoro said to the teen. Luffy jumped slightly at the sudden question before he smiled._ _ _ _ _ _ _

_Yeah, they are nice. They all give me the same good feeling. I don't know why, but I feel myself trusting them already. I just hope I'm not wrong about it._

_________"Well, it's only better for us if they're good. We'll have to stay here for a while after all." The other man said. The teen nodded. To be honest, Luffy hadn't even thought about the group being bad during breakfast. They were nice and didn't even show a single trace of evil inside them. It was weird considered that his mistrust in people had grown over the years._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________"Let's go back." Zoro said. He and Luffy exited the room and walked down the stairs. Luffy smiled. Maybe they were very lucky to be found by these people._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

* * *

_________Chopper was sitting at his desk writing something down. He was writing about how Luffy had felt and how his wound looked. The wound was healing faster than he expected. It was almost too fast._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________That was not the only thing he wrote down. He also wrote about the scars he had seen on the teen's body. Most of them were tiny, faded lines. But the ones that stood out the most were the two long scars on Luffy's back._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is slightly longer than the other ones (almost 3500 instead of 2000 words). I have enough time so yeah..  
> Thank you so much of your favs, follows and, of course, your reviews! I really appreaciate them.  
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	7. A nice day outside

"So, how long do you think you guys are going to stay here?" Franky asked Zoro and Luffy when they returned. Zoro shrugged. "I don't know. Probably until we're healed enough. I don't want to risk running into the Government while we're still injured." He said. Luffy nodded in agreement.

"I thought so. Anyway, I got your room ready. Do I need to show you the way?" Franky asked. Both men nodded and followed the other to their new room.

"Here it is." Franky said as he opened the door of one of the bedrooms on the second floor. The room wasn't really big, but big enough for the two of them. There were two beds, two bedside tables and a wardrobe.

"One of the upstairs bathrooms is at the left side of your room. There is a sign on it, so you can't miss it. You two can use it whenever you want. Me and the others use the bathroom at the other side of the hallway." Franky said.

Zoro thanked the man. "No problem bro. I'll be leaving now. I got things to do. See ya!" Fanky said and left the room.

"So, what are we going to do now?" Zoro asked his friend. Luffy thought for a bit. He then signed with his hands.

_Can we go outside?_

____

Outside. Now that he thought about it, Zoro had never seen Luffy outside. Well, at least not at daytime. He wondered when the teen had last seen the sun.

"Sure." The older man answered. Luffy smiled.

They walked downstairs and asked the first person they saw (Nami) where they could go outside. Apparently, these people had a big garden next to the forest. The girl didn't mind showing them the way to the garden. She was going there anyway.

* * *

The first thing Luffy did when he exited the house was look at the sky. The sky was completely blue, no cloud to be seen. The sun was shining brightly. It really had been a long time..

Zoro watched the young man take in the sky. The teen's skin looked a lot paler in the light of the sun. Luffy laid down on the green grass (which reminded him a bit of Zoro's hair). The sun felt really nice on his skin. The older man sat down beside him.

There were more people in the garden, probably because it was so sunny outside. Robin was reading a book in one of the lounging chairs. Nami sat down beside her. Usopp and Chopper were running through the garden. They seemed to be doing some kind of game. Sanji stood near the door with a cigarette in his mouth. The only ones missing were Franky and Brook.

Even though Luffy was lying on the grass with his eyes half closed, his eyes kept following the two teens running around in the garden. His inner child was begging him to play too, but he knew he couldn't. At least, not yet. His wound had to heal more.

"You want to play with them, don't you?" Zoro's voice said from beside him. Luffy pouted.

_Maybe.. ___

____

Zoro smiled. "You're always so childish. Be patient. I'm sure they will let you join once you're healed enough." The older man said. Luffy nodded. The teen continued watching the other teens play. Zoro laid down and closed his eye. A little rest wouldn't hurt.

* * *

Zoro woke up from a slap in his face. He groaned and pushed the hand off his face. He looked beside him to see that Luffy had fallen asleep, his limps spread in all directions. The older man sat up and looked around. Not much had changed, except for the fact that he couldn't see Sanji and that Usopp and Chopper were now sitting down in the grass. Usopp seemed to be telling the other teen something. Maybe a story. They were too far away for him to hear.

"Do you want something to drink?" Someone said behind him. Zoro turned around to see Sanji standing there with a tray with a few glasses of water and juice. The man thanked the cook and took a glass of water.

He was about to take a sip from his glass of water when another arm was thrown his way, making him almost drop the glass. "Dammit Luffy!" He said and hit the sleeping teen on the head. Luffy opened his eyes and yawned. The teen sat up and rubbed his eyes. "Keep your arms with you next time you sleep next to me." Zoro said. The younger man smiled and apologized before he took Zoro's glass of water and drank it whole. "Hey, get your own drink!" Zoro snapped.

As if called, Sanji appeared in front of the duo and held the tray with drinks out to them. Zoro took another glass of water. Luffy set the empty glass down on the tray and took a glass with juice. The Luffy's eyes fell on the two talking teens in the grass as he drank his juice.

_I wonder what they're talking about.. ___

____

__

"Then go and sit with them. I'm sure they don't mind." Zoro said to the teen. Luffy frowned. He didn't really want to leave Zoro's side. He hadn't even known these people for one day. Though, as far as he knew they weren't bad. The idea of going to them and listen to whatever they were talking about was very tempting.

"I can come with you if you don't want to go alone. I don't mind." Zoro said as if he had read the other man's thoughts. Luffy hesitated a little before nodding. The two of them stood up and walked over to Usopp and Chopper.

Usopp and Chopper both looked at the two newcomers. The four of them stared at each other for a few seconds before Zoro spoke up. "Do you two mind if Luffy and I sit down with you?" He asked. "No, of course not! Sit down!" Chopper said as he patted the grass next to him. Both men took a seat in the grass.

"Luffy was wondering what you were talking about, so he wanted to sit here to listen." Zoro said to the two teens. Usopp smiled. "That was a good choice. I was just telling one of the tales of the Great Captain Usopp!" He said as he proudly pointed his thumb at himself.

Usopp started to tell a story about how the Great Captain Usopp (himself) beat ten thousand giant ants with one punch. Luffy and Chopper listened in amazement. Zoro had laid down again. The long-nosed teen's lies didn't really interest him. At least Luffy liked it.

Usopp continued telling his tales to the other teens. After a while Zoro had to go to the toilet. He patted Luffy's shoulder to get his attention. The teen turned to face him. "I need to use the restroom. I'll be right back." He said to the younger man. Luffy nodded and turned his attention back to the tale-telling teen, afraid to miss anything of the other's story.

* * *

It took Zoro ten minutes to find the bathroom and another ten to find the garden again. 'They should really put up some signs or something.' He thought as he entered the garden again.

The three teens were still in the same spot as they were when he left. Apparently, they didn't miss his presents at all.

He decided to sit down on one of the chairs near the house. He had a clear view of everyone on the garden.

Robin walked up to him, her book in her hand. "Mind if I sit with you?" She asked. Zoro was a bit wary of the dark-haired woman. She was stated as a criminal after all. Then again, it wasn't really her fault. But still..

He said he didn't mind. The woman smiled and sat down on the chair next to him. They were silent for a little while. Then, Robin spoke up. "I was wondering where you two live. There aren't that many cities nearby." She said. "We live in East Blue City. Me and Luffy share a apartment there. Though, I think we won't be returning there anytime soon." Zoro said. The Government knows his address and will probably keep a close eye on the apartment. Luckily, he didn't have any valuable things there so he didn't have to return.

"I see. Some of us lived there too. Actally, most of us came from the nearby cities." Robin said. They didn't say anything for a minute or so before Zoro spoke up. "I was wondering about something. Why do you live here? It's in the middle of the forest. Wouldn't it be easier to live in the city?" He asked.

"That's a good question. Basically, we're all misfits one way or another. We don't belong in the society, so we decided to live somewhere else. Franky built this house for us to live in. He calls it The Thousand Sunny." The woman answered.

"I must say, he did a great job. Strange name for a house though. Why did he name it that?" Zoro asked. "I don't know. He said it was a name one of his friends came up with." Robin answered.

"Anyway, how did you all meet? It's weird to see such a big age difference between some of your friends." Zoro said. He was right though. One of them looked like he could be the grandfather of the younger ones.

"I'm afraid I'm not able to tell you. I guess we just happened to meet one day and became friends. I can't think of anything particular that caused our friendship. The age difference doesn't matter to us." Robin told the man. The silence returned between the two. The dark-haired woman grabbed her book and began reading again. 'Well, that was a random conversation..' Zoro thought. He continued watching his friend, who was still listening to the stories of the other teen in awe.

* * *

"-and then I threw the mountain right at the monster's face! He exploded in thousands of tiny cubes. And that's how I saved the whole world from another catastrophe!" Usopp finished his tale. Chopper and Luffy both stared at him like he was a hero.

Luffy had already become great friends with the other teens. They were fun to be with and didn't do much boring adult stuff.

"You're amazing, Usopp!" Chopper squealed. Luffy said the same, but then with his hands instead of his voice. The long-nosed teen watched Luffy's hand gestures and got an idea.

"Hey, I know a game to play. Luffy, you 'say' something with your hands and we try to guess what." Usopp said. The other two agreed. "Okay, you look around for something and gesture to us what it is. Begin with something simple." Usopp said. Luffy nodded and looked around in the garden.

'Something simple..' He thought. He then spotted something. He began to gesture with his hands. The other two teens began to guess what he meant. They began to name names of various objects in the garden.

"Oh, I know! It's a table!" Chopper yelled. Luffy smiled and nodded. The looked around for something else. He moved his hands again.

"A lamp! A mushroom! A parasol! No wait, a tree!" Usopp yelled. Luffy nodded at that last one. This game was actually a lot of fun. He looked for another object.

"I know this one! It's a glass!" Usopp said and pointed to the empty glasses standing in the grass in between them. The mute teen smiled and gave thumbs up.

"Let me try now." Chopper said. He looked around and began to gesture with his hands. The long-nosed teen began to yell the names of things he saw while Luffy pointed at objects.

"Luffy won. It's the lounging chair." Chopper said. Luffy threw his hands up in a cheer. He then smiled softly. The three of them having fun like this reminded him a bit of him and his brothers. They used to do these kinds of things too when they were little.

His smile disappeared at the thought of his brothers. No. There's no need to think about them now. Luffy shook his head to get rid of the thoughts. The other teens looked at him worriedly.

"Luffy, are you alright? Something bothering you?" Chopper asked. He shook his head and smiled.

They then continued their game. They laughed, they talked, the game became more and more fun every passing minute. He wished it could last forever.

* * *

Zoro watched Luffy having fun with his new friends. The three of them were pointing in all direction while shouting things. However, the thing that really made the older man smile was the fact that Luffy smiled.

It wasn't a fake or small, meaningless smile. No, it was a true, bright, teeth-showing smile. A smile because he was having fun, because he was happy.

The older man just hoped that no one would disturb this happiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is another chapter! I hope you enjoyed it.  
> Thank you for reading this story. I really appreciate all your reviews, favs and follows. Thank you!


	8. Staying or leaving

About two weeks had passed since Zoro and Luffy were saved by the group of friends. A bond had already formed between all nine people. Especially Luffy had bonded really fast with everyone. He played around a lot with Usopp and Chopper.

It didn't really matter that the teen couldn't speak. Whenever he signed something with his hands, Zoro would translate it or the others would try themselves to understand what he was saying.

Usopp and Chopper were really getting the hang of it. They and Luffy included hand language a lot in games, so the two of them could understand a lot of what Luffy was saying.

Zoro now trusted the people he and Luffy stayed with a lot more. He knew they weren't bad people. However, he still was on his guard for any possible danger.

* * *

It was Sunday and the weather outside wasn't as good as the last few weeks. Right now, it was raining really bad, so the group had decided to play a card game inside.

Luffy had apparently never seen cards in his life, so he was mainly holding up cards to Zoro and asking what they were instead of playing the actual game. The others didn't mind though.

Zoro sighed when the teen beside him tapped his arm for the umpteenth time in half an hour. He turned to face Luffy only to get a card pressed in his face.

The man looked at the card. It was the queen of hearts. He told the teen this and continued playing the game. Luffy may find the cards more fascinating than the actual game, but he was trying to win here.

Luffy grabbed an other card from the pile and examined it. It was a.. how was it called again? It looked a bit like a black upside-down heart thingy. The teen thought it looked a lot cooler than the other symbols. He wondered what kind of card this was.

Luffy tapped on Zoro's arm again. The man once again turned to look at whatever card the teen was holding up for him to see.

An ace of spades. He sighed. He knew this kind of card would come up. He was surprised the teen didn't grab an ace earlier in the game. He just hoped Luffy wouldn't react too badly on the name.

"It's the ace of spades, Luffy." He said. Zoro saw emotions come up in the other man's eyes, but they vanished almost as quickly as they appeared. The teen stared at the card for a little while before laying it down on the table with his other cards.

The game of cards continued normally. Nami was the one who won that round. They played a few more rounds before deciding to stop. Usopp was putting the cards back in the box since it was his game.

Since Usopp liked his stuff organized, he counted the cards quickly to see if he had all of them. Apparently, he did not. One card was missing.

"Hey guys, does one of you have one of the cards? I'm missing one." He asked the others. Most of them shook their heads. Zoro, however, did have an idea where the card could be.

"Luffy? Do you still have that one card?" He asked the smaller man beside him. The teen looked away as he shook his head, clearly not speaking the truth. Man, Luffy was such a bad liar.

"Luffy, give Usopp his card back. The game isn't complete without it." Zoro told the teen. Luffy hesitated before returning the card to Usopp. After handing the card over, he walked away and left the room. Zoro followed him.

Usopp and the others watched the two leave in confusion. The curly-haired teen looked at the card in his hand. "An ace of spades?" He asked out loud. "I wonder why he took this card.."

"I don't know. Luffy's probably being weird again." Franky said. "Hey, don't call him weird. He's just.. different." Chopper objected. "He probably just thought it looked cool or something. He has never played with cards before." The teen said. Franky shrugged. "Alright then, I gotta go. See ya!" The older man said and left the room.

The other two decided to drop the subject and went to do their own thing as well.

* * *

Zoro followed his friend on his way through the house. Luffy walked up the stairs and into their bedroom. The older man followed the teen and closed the door behind him. The younger man turned to face Zoro. The two stared at each other for a few seconds before Zoro spoke up. "Are you okay?" He asked. He could see sadness in the other's eyes.

_I don't know.. ___

____

He didn't look okay. Zoro wanted to say more, but Luffy beat him to it. The teen had decided to change the subject.

_Where are we going? I mean, when we're healed enough and need to leave. ___

____

____

The question was sudden and, to be honest, Zoro didn't know either. The only thing he knew was that they couldn't stay here, in this area. It was too dangerous.

"We need to go somewhere far away from here. Somewhere where they can't find us. It doesn't matter where, but as long as it's safe." The older man said. Luffy looked slightly away.

_I don't really want to leave. I want to stay here, with our friends. ___

____

____

Zoro sighed. "I know you want to stay, but we can't. What if they find out what you are. We can't take the risk." He said. Luffy pouted and nodded. The teen knew Zoro was right. He just hoped there was a chance he could stay here.

* * *

Dinnertime came around and everyone gathered in the kitchen. As always, Sanji had prepared their food. Everyone ate and talked like they usually did. Of course, the first one to ask for seconds was Luffy.

It never really bothered Sanji that the teen ate so much. However, something that did bother him was that Luffy didn't seem to gain any weight. He still looked the same as when he first arrived here.

It wasn't like he could clearly see the teen's bones or something, but he still thought the teen looked way too skinny. No matter how much Luffy ate, he didn't seem to gain any weight at all.

On the other hand, it didn't seem to bother the teen. He didn't look or act weak, like you would expect from such a scrawny person. He could also see that Luffy had some muscles and could put up quite a fight if he needed to.

But still. Sanji was a cook and the other man's weight bothered him. He probably should ask Chopper sometime what could be the cause of this.

For now, it didn't matter. The cook would make enough food for everyone, even that bottomless pit called Luffy.

* * *

Little more than a week passed. Almost half of the inhabitants of the house were away right now. Almost everyone had a job or went to school.

Sanji works in a restaurant called Baratie. He only worked there in the afternoons since he had to make dinner for himself and his friends at home. Nami works part-time in a clothing store. She also makes maps in her free time.

Chopper went to a medical school. He goes there a few days a week. He wants to become a even greater doctor. His personal teacher was the one who had given him the equipment he had at home. She knew that he and his friends tend to get injured a lot. Besides, Chopper was already a good doctor. He could treat his friends' injuries at home.

Robin didn't have a real job. It wasn't like she didn't want to work, she just couldn't. She was a wanted criminal and couldn't stay in one place for too long (except at home). She could work in the city, but only for small amounts of time.

Franky only worked when someone hired him. He can build all kinds of things, like bridges, boats and sometimes even cars. He prefers to build houses though. When he didn't have a job he makes all kinds of small inventions.

Brook is a musician. He creates his music at home and preforms for small audiences in clubs and bars. Usopp went to a school to learn to build things, like Franky. He would sometimes help the other man with small projects and he too made inventions.

The only ones at home right now were Zoro, Luffy, Franky, Robin and Brook. Everyone was doing their own thing. In Zoro and Luffy's case, this was sleeping.

Normally, only Zoro would fall asleep in daytime, but Luffy was bored and had decided to take a nap as well. So now the two of them laid on the couch. Well, Zoro laid on the couch. Luffy had decided to sleep in the other man's lab. The older man didn't really mind.

It was after about an hour when something woke Zoro up. The man opened his eyes and blinked a few times. He wondered what woke him up.

His question was answered when the teen in his lab moved. He could hear Luffy's short, ragged breaths. The teen's hands were gripping his bandage-covered chest. Zoro had seen this happen more than once in the weeks they had spent here and took action immediately. He began to gently shake the other man.

"Luffy?" He asked. No response. He began shaking a little harder. "Come on, Luffy. Wake up. You're having a nightmare." He said. The teen's eyes then snapped open. Luffy shot into a sitting position, his head barely missing Zoro's on the way up.

The teen breathed heavily. Zoro sighed and reached for the glass of water that sat on the table in front of them. He gave it to Luffy who drank it all. The older man knew better than to ask what the nightmare was about. They were always the same anyway.

The teen calmed down rather quick. "You okay?" Zoro asked. Luffy nodded. The younger man realized that he was still sitting on the other man's lab and got off.

They both just sat on the couch in silence for the next few minutes, not really feeling like falling asleep again. After about five minutes the front door opened and someone walked in.

A few seconds later Chopper's head poked around the corner of the door. "Hey, I'm back." He said before walking into the room. He set his bag down on the ground and joined the other two men on the couch.

"So, what have you been up to? Anything fun?" He asked. Luffy smiled and shook his head.

_Nope. It's boring here without you and Usopp. ___

____

____

"Hey, I was here with you the whole time, you know." Zoro said. Luffy grinned and signed again.

_You're boring too. ___

____

____

"Well thank you." The older man said sarcastically. The other two laughed. Chopper then seemed to remember something.

"Oh, before I forget! I need to change your bandages today. Shall we do that right now?" The young doctor asked. The other men nodded and the three of them went to the infirmary.

When they arrived in the infirmary Chopper took off Zoro's bandages first. The man only had bandages on his chest. Those he had on his eye were gone already because it wasn't a really big wound and it had already healed. But even though the wound had healed, Zoro was now blind in one eye.

The doctor gently traced the wound, now scar, on the man's chest with his hand. It had healed quite nicely. "I don't think you need bandages anymore. It still needs to heal more, so I recommend you don't do anything too taxing to your body." Chopper said. The older man nodded in understanding.

The young doctor then moved to Luffy. The other teen still didn't really like it when people touched him, but he tolerated it when it was one of his friends.

Chopper removed the bandages. Luffy's wound had healed much quicker than the doctor had expected. Not even a month had passed and the wound was already almost fully healed. It had left a big scar on the teen's chest though.

"I'm still surprised at how fast you have healed, Luffy. I thought it would take at least another few weeks for it to completely heal, but apparently not." He said. The other teen gave a small smile.

The doctor then went to stand behind Luffy. He looked the scars on the teen's back. "How did you get these?" He asked as he gently touched the lines. Chopper felt the other man flinch under his fingers.

Luffy was slightly panicking now. What was he going to say? He can't tell the truth. He needed to think of something quick.

The teen looked at Zoro for help. The other man looked at him and nodded. He had thought of something.

"Luffy once told me that he got them when he crawled under a fence when he was young. The fence had sharp points at the bottom and he cut open his back." Zoro said. Luffy nodded.

"And the one over here?" Chopper asked as he pointed at the small scar under the teen's left eye.

Luffy signed something at Chopper. The doctor still had a little trouble with reading sign language and looked at Zoro for help. "He said he did that one himself with a knife." Zoro said. Luffy nodded once again.

Chopper sighed. "That wasn't very smart of you Luffy. Oh well, we all did stupid things when we were younger.. " He said. The doctor then proceed to bandage Luffy's chest.

"This is probably the last time I need to replace your bandages. I don't think the wound will open again." The young doctor said. Luffy smiled and signed a 'thank you' at him.

Chopper smiled back at the other teen before frowning. "I think you're ready to leave when you want. There isn't much left for me to do." He said. Luffy's smile faltered. He didn't want to leave.

"You still can decide to stay here with us, you know." The young doctor said hopefully. "We don't mind living with two extra friends in our house."

"Thank you, but we can't stay. We have to leave. Us staying here will only cause trouble for all of us." Zoro told the teen. Chopper sighed. "But we will keep seeing each other, right?" He asked. Both he and Luffy looked at Zoro for the answer. The man gave a small smile. "Of course." He answered. The other two smiled as well.

"Alright, let's go to the living room. Usopp will be coming home in ten minutes. Then we can play a game together!" Chopper yelled excitedly. He and Luffy ran out of the room. Zoro too left the room.

He really had to think of a location to go to now. They will probably leave within a week. And how were they going to get out of here? They didn't have a car. Well, he did have a car at home, but he can't risk going there.

In other words, he had much to think about. He was sure he would figure it out in time, but for now he had a bigger problem.

Which direction was the living room again?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I hope you don't mind the time skips, but I suck at filling in time between things. Most of this chapter was just information and stuff I needed to put in the story somewhere.  
> Thank you for reading and 'till next time!


	9. Surprise attack

_-On a location not far from the place Luffy and his friends are- ___

____

"Sir! We found them. They're still alive!"

Akainu looked up from his work. "Where did you find them?" He asked. The man in front of him took out a folder and gave it to the other man. The man took the folder and opened it. In it were a few photos and some information.

"They have been sighted at a house in the forest. It isn't that far from here. They're probably staying there for an unknown amount of time." The man said.

Akainu looked at the photos. All of the photographs had been taken in front of the house. The two he had been looking for were indeed in the photos. There were also other people on some of the photos, but he didn't look at them. He nodded. "Good. Anything else?"

"We found Roronoa Zoro's nametag in the forest. With that and the photos we can confirm that he was indeed the level seven guard who took D-1 and D-3 out." The man said.

The other man's eyes narrowed. "I knew we shouldn't have trusted him with the key. That bastard was getting way to friendly with those monsters."

"Sir, when should we go there to get them back?" The other man asked.

"We have to retrieve them as soon as possible. Roronoa needs to be silenced. It's too dangerous to let him go free with all the information he has about us. D-3 needs to be taken back. We still have some things to be tested out on him before we can put him down."

"Put him down? Sir, I thought Sengoku didn't want them to die?" The other man asked suprised.

"I don't care what that old man wants. I'm the one in charge now and I decide what happens here. We don't need to keep him alive longer than nessesairly. We still have another one anyway. Understood?"

"Yes sir!"

"Good. Now leave. I have things I need to do."

* * *

It was a sunny day. Everyone was outside enjoying the weather. Usopp, Chopper and Luffy were playing a game. The others were just sitting on chairs or in the grass. It was Sunday so everyone was home. Nobody, except the youngest of the group (those three were always full of energy), really felt like doing anything.

A few days ago, Zoro told them that he and Luffy would be leaving at the end of the week. They were both almost fully healed and didn't need medical attention anymore.

The others were sad to hear that. They all had started to like the two men. They were their friends. The thought of them leaving so soon wasn't pleasant.

They tried to get the two of them to stay, but Zoro's mind was set. He, and especially Luffy, didn't like the thought of leaving either, but it was simply not safe to stay here. It would bring them all in danger.

Zoro had found a place to stay on the internet. It was far away from where they were now, an almost six hour ride. Franky had told him they could use his car for now. He and the other inhabitants of the house didn't really use it that much anyway. They always walked to the city. They did have to return the car to him someday though.

Since the two men were leaving soon and because everyone now trusted the two completely, Usopp had given Zoro his three swords back. The swordsman was really glad for that. He didn't feel complete without them.

Now, they were trying to spend as much time with each other as they could. Even if it's just sitting near each other without talking. Just the feeling of having their friends close was enough.

The youngest three had other plans than sitting around. Now they knew Luffy was leaving soon, they spent almost every minute of the day playing games like hide and seek, tag and many other games.

When they played hide and seek, Luffy would almost always lose. Even though he couldn't talk, he somehow made so much noise that it was impossible to not find him right away. On the other hand, he was very good at finding the other two.

Tag was their favourite game to play. No one could predict who would win. They ran around trying to catch the others, which was a lot of fun for some reason.  
Today, they had started out with a small game of hide and seek. It only lasted for an hour before they moved on to play tag. They were running around while dodging objects and people. Sometimes they would knock something over or run into something. That didn't stop them though.

The rest of the group didn't mind the younger three playing around. They sometimes would tell them to be more careful when they ran into someone, but other than that they didn't interfere.

Right now, it was Chopper's turn to try and tag the other two teens. He was currently chasing Luffy while Usopp took a small break to take a sip of his drink. It was already warm outside and running around made the heat even worse for them. So, it wasn't very uncommon for one of them to take a break to drink some water.

Luffy ran around in circles around the other people, passing the house every time. When he once more passed the house, something in the woods caught his eye. It looked like something reflected the light of the sun for a few seconds. He stopped running and stared at the forest.

The trees around the house stood very close to each other which made it difficult to look behind them. There was only one clear opening at the front of the house for the car. They were currently in the backyard and, even though the sun was shining, Luffy couldn't see much of what was happening behind the trees.

Chopper stopped next to him and tapped his arm. "Tag, you're it!" He exclaimed happily. The smile faltered when he got no response of the other teen.

"Luffy, something wrong?" He asked. The other teen stared for a few more seconds at the trees before shaking his head. He must have imagined it.

He was about to continue his game with Chopper when a sound caught both teens' attention. Apparently, no one else noticed the sound. Maybe they were the only ones who heard it. They both had very good hearing.

The sound wasn't loud, but the noise was somehow familiar to Luffy. It sounded like metal, almost like the cocking of a gun. But that couldn't be, right? No one ever came near the house since it was so far away from any cities.

"You heard that too, right?" Asked Chopper. Luffy nodded. The two teens stared at the woods. The noise came from the same place where Luffy had seen something just seconds earlier.

There was the shimmering again! Luffy squinted his eyes trying to see what the object was. The bright sunlight made it hard to see, but after a few seconds Luffy recognized the object. It was the barrel of a gun.

And it was aimed in their direction.

His eyes widen. He grabbed Chopper by his arm and pulled him down with him to the ground. He was just in time because not a second later a shot was heard and the glass window behind them shattered.

The rest of the group jumped up in alarm at the loud noise. Luffy looked through the hole in the window and saw some kind of dart in the middle of the pile of class shards.

"What happened?!" Nami yelled in alarm. The two teens didn't reply. They didn't know what happened either, though Luffy had a bad feeling about this.

The teen stood up and ran to Zoro's side. His hands made rapid, panicked movements as he tried to tell Zoro something as quick as he could.

_I think it's them, Zoro! They've found us! ___

____

____

Zoro narrowed his eyes and looked towards the only place where the dart could have come from, the forest.

At that moment, people started to emerge from the woods. All of them were carrying a gun or some other kind of weapon. The two men recognized the uniforms the people were wearing immediately. They were guards from the place they had escaped from.

Luffy started to panic even more at the sight of the guards. No, this could not be happening. After all those years, he was finally free! He didn't want to go back to that place!

Zoro took out his swords and stood in front of Luffy. Their friends gathered at their side. They didn't know what was going on, but the looks on Zoro's and Luffy's faces said enough. These people were anything but good.

A man with a long white coat stepped forwards. He had to be some kind of leader. Zoro knew he wasn't the real leader. The one in charge of the place he used to work at and which had held Luffy was a man called Akainu. That man was probably too busy to come himself (not that he wanted that man to come).

"Good afternoon, citizens. We are here on behalf of the Government. We will not harm you as long as you cooperate." The man said.

The group instinctively shifted closer together and formed some kind of circle. The three youngest stood in the middle of this circle and the older friends stood around them protectively.

When the small group of people stayed quiet, the man continued. "We are here to arrest two criminals who are with you right now. They have committed various types of crimes and need to be held captive for everyone's safety." He said.

The man then spotted someone in the group he recognized. He smiled. "Well, well. Look who we have here. Nico Robin, another wanted criminal." He said. Some gasps could be heard in the crowd of people behind him. Robin shifted uncomfortably. They had seen her and they would try to take her for sure.

"That's three criminals in one place. I wonder if the rest of you knew this." The man said. He still got no reaction.

"Alright, I need you all to hand the criminals over to us. We'll take care of them." He told the group. The nine friends shifted even closer together.

Luffy's heart was racing. He was scared, not of the people who would take him, but of the place they would bring him to. He only had bad memories of that place. He never, never wanted to return there.

"We'll never give them to you." Franky said. The rest of the non-criminals nodded in agreement. Even though they had expected this answer Robin, Zoro and Luffy almost sighed in relief. Their friends would never betray them.

The man huffed in annoyance. "I guess we don't have an other option than to take them by force." He said. The people behind him took battle stances. They were ready to take on the small group in front of them.

The group of friends, too, took battle stances. Zoro had his swords out already, Nami grabbed a bo staff which stood against the side of the house, Usopp grabbed his slingshot from his bag and loaded it and Brook took his sword from his cane. The others would fight without weapons.

The man looked very annoyed that the group still didn't give in. He raised his hand in the air and yelled.

"Attack!"

And so, the battle began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter.  
> Thank you for reading!


	10. Battle

The Government's men were the ones to make the first move. The ones with swords ran towards the nine people while the ones with guns started shooting from a distance. Some of the shooters had guns with real bullets and others had darts in them.

Their main focus were Robin, Zoro and Luffy, the three criminals.

The guards seemed to have underestimated the group's abilities. They probably thought they would win very quickly, but the opposite was true.

The group of friends stood their own against the Government. They were all surprisingly good fighters. The people of the Government had expected a good fight from Zoro and Luffy, but the other ones were also very strong.

As soon as the first guard began to run towards the nine friends, the small group attacked as well. Zoro was the one who landed the first blow. He was the one at the front of his group. His swords sliced through the men who were unfortunately enough to be up front. The wounds weren't deadly, but they were bad enough to immobilize the guards.

The next ones who attacked were Sanji and Franky. They ran after the swordsman and started to take down enemies as well. Sanji jammed his foot in the face of the first men he saw. He then proceeded to kick the enemies around him with one or two feet at the same time. In the restaurant he worked at, he often had to literally kick someone out, so he had quite some experience.

Franky started punching the Government's men around him and his friends. His rather large hands did a lot of damage. He didn't really have any fighting experiences other than a few bar fights, but for his job he had to be strong and that really did help by taking down enemies.

The next one to join the fight was Luffy. He was a little hesitant at first, still a bit shaken that the Government had actually managed to find him, but after the first three started to battle against the enemies, he too left the circle to fight. Even though he was really skinny, he had a lot of strength. His small fists pounded his enemies into the ground. Man, it felt good to give these guys a beating.

For someone who hadn't fought much in his life he sure could throw a good punch.

Brook, too, joined the fight. He took down guard after guard with his sword. Sure, he may not be as good as Zoro with his sword, but his long-time experience as a swordsman didn't fail him.

The last four stayed together. Three of them had never fought before and didn't really know how to deal with this situation.

Robin _did _have fighting experience. She had been a criminal for most of her life and many have tried to hand her over to the Government to claim her bounty. She learned how to hurt, immobilize and even kill people. She didn't like to do it though.__

____

Now, she tried to stay out of the real fight in front of her, only stepping in when she really had to. She stayed behind so she could protect her three friends who didn't have any fighting experience.

Usopp wasn't afraid. No, he was just shaking because it was very cold (even though the sun was shining). Okay, maybe he _was _trembling in fear.__

____

____

He lifted his shaking hand and aimed his slingshot at the nearest enemy. He fired and hit the guard in the face, knocking the man out cold. He smiled slightly. His father was a talented sniper in the army. He had learned his son how to shoot as well. Usopp may not have any fighting experience, but sharpshooting was in his blood.

Nami held the bo staff out in front of her, determined to hit every enemy who came too close. She had found the bo staff in the city one day when she was there on her own. She had grabbed the staff and hit some creep with it when the man tried to rob her. Nami took the bo staff home with her for some reason. It came out handy for a situation like this.

Chopper stood behind Robin. He was still slightly shaking from almost getting shot. He didn't have any fighting experiance whatsoever. The only thing he could do was try to punch someone in a place he knew would hurt. He was a doctor, so he knew what places would do most damage to a person. He didn't like the idea of hurting someone though.

* * *

Everyone lost track of time after the fight began. Not that anyone really cared about time right now. The only thing that they knew was that the sky was steadily getting darker as time increased.

Luffy was fighting the enemies in front of him. It felt good to release his pent-up anger on the guards. After all those years, he could finally land some good hits on the men without getting restrained immediately.

The people who had imprisoned him, hurt him, hurt his brothers. He almost felt excited when he punched these people.

He knew some of the guards in front of him didn't work on the level where he had been held captive all those years and probably never had seen or even heard from him, but he didn't care. They all deserved back the pain they put him through.

He could hear his friends fighting around him. He could feel their presence close to him, but he couldn't see them. There were too many guards around him trying to take him down.

He could hear shots being fired and he could see the bullets and darts flying over him and the guards. He wondered what kind of darts they used. Was there poison in them? Some kind of anesthetic? He didn't know and he didn't want to find out either.

Then, someone landed a good hit on him. He got punched through the group of guards, knocking some of them out, and into the side of the house. He groaned and stood up. Well, at least he's not surrounded by guards anymore. It was getting kind of cramped at the place he was just seconds ago.

Luffy looked around. His friends were spread in the backyard. He could see Zoro taking down guards near the treeline, Sanji kicking the shit out of enemies on the swordsman's right, Franky and Brook stood back-to-back in the middle of the backyard as they fought against the Government's men, Robin and Nami stood next to each other trying to hold off the enemies while Chopper stood behind them and Usopp was a little to the left of the girls and Chopper, shooting down guard after guard with his slingshot.

He smiled slightly. His friends were amazing fighters.

Luffy looked forwards again just in time to see a dart coming his way. He ducked and the dart hit the wooden wall behind him. Immediately after that the guards he was fighting before rushed back at him.

The Government's people seemed to have changed their tactics. This time, they didn't swarm all over him like they did last time. There were small spaces between each guard as they once again attacked him.

He saw that more people gathered around the guards he fought against. Most of them had guns. He didn't pay them much mind. They wouldn't shoot and try risking hitting their allies, would they?

The fight continued. He took down enemy after enemy. Every time he took down a guard, an other one took their place. There seemed to be no end to them. Seriously, how many were there?

Suddenly, Luffy felt a sharp sting in his side. He looked down to see a dart stuck in the right side of his chest. _Just great. _He really should have paid more attention to the guards with guns. He grabbed the dart and pulled it out, hissing sightly at the pain it caused.__

____

____

He threw the dart aside and continued his fight against the enemies around him. A little while after he got shot he started to feel slightly dizzy, but not dizzy enough to stop fighting.

Several minutes passed and the dizziness increased. He now felt slightly nauseous as well. He would occasionally shake his head to try to get rid of the dizziness. Fortunately, it didn't affect his fighting ability which he was very glad for.

The guards around him seemed to get frustrated when he still kept fighting as strong as ever. Had they really expected him to just collapse after getting injected with whatever the dart had contained? No, he had endured worse drugs than this. He wouldn't fall so easily.

Even though Luffy knew that he was able to defeat his enemies even when dizzy and nauseous, he decided to move closer to Zoro in case whatever he was injected with started to influence his ability to fighting. He knew Zoro was strong enough to fend for the two of them if it was really necessary.

He knocked down guards left and right as he made his way towards his friend. The swordsman saw him approach and he went to meet the younger man halfway. He had known the teen long enough to see that something was wrong with him.

"You okay?" The swordsman asked as he came close enough to the teen. Luffy quickly signed him what had happened. The older man understood why the teen had come to him. They silently agreed to stay together for the rest of the fight just in case Luffy had been injected with something that ruled him out of the fight.

* * *

Usopp shot one guard after another down with his slingshot. He didn't know why, but he kind of enjoyed taking out these people. He felt more powerful than them, stronger than them.

He really had to thank his father someday for teaching him how to shoot. Sure, he had learned most of what he knew himself, but his father had taught him the basics of being a sharpshooter.

In the small periods between shooting he looked around in their backyard, which looked more like a battlefield at the moment.

The bodies of guards were shattered all over the grass. He wasn't sure how many were actually dead. Most of them were probably just knocked out, but he can't deny that the possibility is there that some were accidentally killed by one of them.

He was so busy with sniping down the guards that he didn't notice he was getting further and further away from his friends.

He heard a shot and a bullet hit the tree right next to him. That was close! He was lucky most shooters couldn't shoot that well because it was almost impossible to see the bullets in the dark. The sun was vanishing and it became harder to see. They really must have been fighting for a long while now.

Another shot was fired. This time Usopp wasn't so lucky. The bullet tore right through his hand, the hand that was holding his slingshot.

He cried out in pain. The shock sent him falling backwards on his rear. He held his heavily bleeding hand as he groaned in pain. The cocking of a gun made his eyes widen. He looked up. Barely three meters in front of him stood a guard with a gun aimed at his head.

Everyone must have heard his scream because all the fighting came to an abrupt pause. His friends started at him wide-eyed. The Government's people looked mildly shocked, but most of them smirked. They now had Usopp at their mercy.

The friends cursed at themselves for not noticing sooner that Usopp had been separated. No one was close enough to help the teen. Not only that, but the other guards were still there to prevent them from coming close to their friend as well.

"Sir, do I have permission to shoot?"

That question scared the shit out of all nine friends. There weren't going to shoot Usopp, right? The Government wouldn't shoot an innocent civilian, right? Other than this fight, Usopp never had done anything against the Government.

The leader walked towards the guard and Usopp, an evil smirk on his face. He stood next to the two before turning his gaze to the remaining friends.

"Let this be a lesson for you all. No one picks a fight with the Government."

Luffy's heart nearly stopped at those words. They were going to shoot Usopp! His friend was about to die and they were all too far away to do anything. No, he can't lose Usopp.

He can't lose anyone ever again!

Luffy was the only person who could save the long-nosed teen. What he was about to do could destroy his friendship with everyone but Zoro. He just hoped that his dizziness wouldn't prevent him from saving his friend. He turned his head to face the swordsman.

Zoro saw the look in the teen's eyes and knew enough. He, too, saw that there was no other option.

The leader smirked before saying those awful words.

"Permission granted."

Usopp had closed his eyes in fear. He didn't want to see the terrified faces of his friends. He didn't want to see the barrel of the gun. He didn't want to die yet! His heart raced as he waited for the gun to fire and end his life.

Not a second after the leader had spoken those words, the guard fired his gun. The gun that was aimed at Usopp's head. The gun that would take the sniper's life. The bullet that would deliver finishing blow had been fired.

Screams of panic and despair sounded from Usopp's friends. They struggled to get to the teen. Some were almost crying when they heard the shot. The thought of losing their friend scared them to no end.

They stopped dead in their tracks when they heard the guards standing closest to Usopp gasp in shock. Some yelled out in disbelieve. Others almost fainted in fear. The crowd around the sniper and the guard broke apart as everyone set a few steps back.

The friends wasted no time making their way though the shocked guards. They had to know what had happened. They had to know if Usopp was still alive.

When they finally got through the crowd, they started at the sight before them in shock.

The bullet had been stopped.

By someone or _something _that looked like..__

____

____

..Luffy?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With uploading chapters I might forget to put some words in italic, but uploading here is a bit annoying with those.  
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter anyway. Thank you for reading!


	11. What he really is

Luffy panted slightly from the run. His back and side hurt badly, but he paid no mind to that. His dizziness had only increased after his sudden movement which made thinking clearly more difficult.

He turned his head to see if Usopp was okay. Other than the hole in his hand, the sniper seemed fine. The long-nosed teen looked at him with shock and a hint of fear. He had expected that.

He turned his gaze back to the guard in front of him. The man was shaking in fear as he tried to crawl away from the demon-like creature. Something in Luffy then changed. He felt how his sanity began to fade away. He was slowly losing control of himself as he watched the person who almost killed his friend try to get away. 

At that moment, the air in the backyard seemed to get colder. Everyone present was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of fear and despair. The group of friends recognized this feeling. It was the same feeling that suddenly appeared on the day that Luffy woke up.

Luffy walked to the man and grabbed the guard by his neck. His sharp nails dug in the guard's throat. He brought the man's face close to his and stared into the man's soul with his blood-red eyes. The anger that could be seen in his eyes made the man almost cry in fear.

Luffy clenched his fingers tighter around the man's neck. The skin under his nails broke and blood started seeping down from the puncture wounds. The guard cried out in pain and struggled to get away from the monster.

The hand clenched tighter. The man started to choke. No air was getting to his lungs. Everyone watched in horror as the monster slowly strangled the man. The only thing that could be heard in the backyard were the choking sounds of the guard.

Suddenly, there was a loud snap and the guard stilled. The gasps for air stopped, the hands that had been clawing at Luffy's hand dropped down and the man's head hung in a weird position above the still clenched fist.

Luffy had snapped the man's neck.

It didn't stop there though. Luffy moved his other hand to the guard and grasped the dead man's head. He then started pulling.

Everyone could hear the guard's skull break under the force of the teen's fingers. The man's neck stretched as Luffy moved the head away from the body. Small tears could be seen in the guard's neck as the teen started to rip the head off. 

Blood spurted from the cuts and most people looked away from the gruesome sight. Skin and muscle was torn apart as the head was slowly severed from the man's body.

"Luffy, enough."

Luffy's body flinched when a hand touched his shoulder. He looked away from the guard's corpse. Zoro was standing next to him.

His sanity slowly began to return to him at the sight of his friend's concerned face. He felt like he woke up from a daydream or something. He had no idea what happened in the last few seconds. He suddenly felt very exhausted as well.

The heavy weight in his hands had him turning back to look at the corpse. He let go with a gasp.

The man's decapitated body fell to the ground with a loud thud. The head rolled a few feet before it came to a stop in front of the crowd. The other guards around them stared at the detached head of the man and backed up even more. The rest of the friends backed up too. Even though they didn't want to admit it, they felt scared. They were afraid of their own friend.

Memories from _that _place came back to Luffy. All the awful things they called him. He had yelled at them so many times that they were wrong! That he wasn't the demon they said he was! But now, he believed they might have spoken the truth after all.__

____

No, he shouldn't think like that. He wasn't a monster! _This wasn't him! ___

____

____

The tense silence was interrupted by the leader, or rather, the sound of the leader's boots breaking twigs as he ran back into the forest. The coward had fled as soon as he got the chance. The rest of the Government's people didn't stay long either.

The guards wasted no time getting the heck out of there now their superior had fled. They dragged the dead and unconscious behind them as they ran back into the forest. After less than two minutes, the whole backyard had been cleared of the Government's men.

The friends were glad the guards had left them, but they couldn't say that they were relieved. There was still one more thing that they didn't really know how to deal with.

The creature in front of them.

The creature looked like Luffy and had been called Luffy by Zoro, so his identity wasn't a mystery anymore. However, they still didn't know if Luffy was a threat to them now. The way he acted before, the way he killed the guard, tore off the man's head. How could they be sure he wouldn't do that to them too?

On the other hand, he was their friend. They hadn't known him for too long, for about a month, but they knew he was a kindhearted teen. In the weeks they had spent with him he never showed any sign of hostility towards them. 

A few meters away from them stood Luffy and Zoro. The younger man was staring at the other people. He could see that they were scared. They feared him. This filled his heart with pain. And this pain was worse than any pain he knew.

Luffy felt a light squeeze in his shoulder. He looked back at his friend in front of him. Zoro was holding him with his hands on his shoulders, both to keep him steady on his feet and to reassure him everything was going to be fine.

The swordsman wasn't sure what to do in this situation. There was too much to worry about. There was Luffy in front of him who looked ready to pass out for several reasons, there was Usopp behind them with a hole in his hand and there was the rest of their little group who were looking at them with both fear and confusion.

How were they going to handle this situation?

Usopp was still in the same place he had been for the past few minutes. He was shaking in fear and pain. He didn't know what happened to Luffy, but his friend didn't look the same right now. What he was looking at, was his description of a demon.

But Luffy had saved him. The teen had taken the blow for him. He had saved him from the bullet that would have taken his life for sure. Was this form the reason why Luffy had been in time? He had seen the distance between him and the other teen and no normal human would have been able to run that distance in less than two seconds.

But Luffy was no normal human. He knew that now.

He didn't really know what to think of this situation. He still was shocked and scared by what Luffy had done to the guard, but right now his friend looked different than when he killed the man. He looked more like the Luffy he knew and not like the person who just killed someone. It almost looked like the teen was scared and hurt.

His eyes focused on Luffy's body. Blood was streaming down the teen's back. Not only that, the teen had been shot as well. Luffy was in pain and needed medical attention, now!

Usopp pushed away his fear and stood up shakingly. The two in front of him turned their heads in his direction when they heard him standing up.

"L-Luffy? Are you o-okay?" Usopp asked with a slight stutter. He didn't know why he even asked. The teen clearly was hurt. Luffy didn't react to his question. He just kept staring at Usopp.

Then, another person joined the small group of three. Chopper stood beside them. The younger teen kept a little distant between him and Luffy at first, but when he saw the wounds on the other teen, he almost immediately went into doctor-mode.

"Luffy you're hurt! We need a doctor! Oh wait, that's me!" The young doctor yelled out. He grabbed Luffy's wrist and pulled him with him to the house. "We have to get you bandaged up immediately. Usopp, too!" He said.

Luffy swayed dangerously as Chopper began to pull him. He felt exhausted and his head felt like it was going to explode. Zoro was immediately at his side to steady him. Usopp followed the three with a concerned look on his face. 

The others backed away slightly as the four of them passed them. They watched as the small group disappeared into the house. After a few seconds they decided to follow them. Even though they were still freaked out by Luffy, they still wanted to be there with their friends.

They, too, entered the house, leaving the dark backyard behind them. It must already be late in the evening. That reminded Sanji that he still had to start with dinner. Oh well, dinner could wait.

They entered the infirmary where they saw the other four. Luffy was sitting on one of the beds with Zoro and Usopp was standing next to Chopper. The young doctor was applying bandages to the sniper's hand.

The doctor finished within a minute. He did it very quickly, only to stop the bleeding, so he could help Luffy. 

Luffy looked a lot worse than Usopp. He had a bleeding hole in his left side and blood was running down his back onto the bed, soaking the sheets under him with the red substance. His skin was darker than normal, probably because of the form his body had taken on, but he somehow still looked pale. 

Chopper had some medical supplies in his hands as he approached Luffy. He laid them down on the bed next to the teen and looked at Luffy. "I have to remove the bullet that is still inside of you. Do you want me to give you some kind of sedation?" He asked.

Luffy shook his head. He still had some kind of drug in his system. It's not the best idea to inject something else in him while there was an unknown substance in his body.

"Alright, we'll do it without sedation. It's going to hurt though." Chopper said. The other teen nodded. Zoro put his hand on his black-haired friend's shoulder, ready to intervene if anything were to go wrong.

Luffy clenched his jaw in pain as the doctor began with the task of removing the bullet. Luckily, the bullet wasn't that deep and still in one piece, so Chopper had it removed fairly quick. The young doctor then pressed some bandages against the wound to stop the bleeding.

Chopper wasn't sure how he was going to bandage Luffy's shot wound. Normally he would have wrapped his patient's torso in bandages to cover the wound, but that wasn't possible in this situation. The wings on Luffy's back were preventing him from doing so. He finally decided to tape the bandages to the teen's chest for now. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the group had taken in Luffy's appearance. It was nothing like they had ever seen. From the bat-like wings on the teen's back and the long, soft-looking tail hanging over the edge of the bed to the curved horns and red eyes. This was definitely not normal.

"Luffy, can I ask you something?" Usopp suddenly asked, breaking the tense, uncomfortable silence in the infirmary.

Luffy looked up from his lap and stared at Usopp. He slowly nodded. He was slightly afraid of what Usopp was going to ask.

"How did you do it? Saving me, I mean. How were you able to get to me so fast?" Usopp asked. He had an idea of what happened, but he wanted to know for sure. The others looked at Luffy as well. They, too, were curious about that. 

Luffy gave a small sigh and looked at Zoro. His green-haired friend nodded. Luffy then began with signing things to Zoro. It was too fast for the others to follow. Zoro then started to tell them what Luffy did.

* * *

_"Permission granted." ___

____

____

_Luffy knew there was no time to hesitate. He needed to act now! ___

____

____

_As soon as the leader spoke the first word, Luffy began to run. While he ran, he did the thing he hated most. The thing that had ruined his life. The reason why he had been captured, tormented, experimented on and all the other things they had done to him. ___

____

____

_He heard a ripping sound as felt his back exploded with pain. He wasn't sure if it was his shirt or his skin that he heard rip apart, probably both, as those awful limbs ripped themselves from the inside of his body. ___

____

____

_With one strong beat of his wings, he moved at incredible speed through the crowd of guards. He could hear the shot being fired as the neared the guard and his friend. ___

____

____

_He was barely in time. He knew he could have been faster if his wings had been in good shape. ___

____

____

_He stopped in front of Usopp as the bullet came closer. He didn't have time to think of a way the projectile wouldn't do any damage to him, so he let himself get hit with the bullet. It pierced his side and got stuck there. ___

____

____

_He felt the pain come over him, but he didn't care. His friend was still alive and that was all that mattered. ___

* * *

____

____

_______________Luffy stopped signing and Zoro finished his last sentence a few seconds later. The others were staring at them with both shock and amazement. Even though most of them were still a little afraid of the teen's appearance, they really appreciated what he had done._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______________He had saved their friend even though he'd only known them for about a month. Not only had he taken the hit meant for Usopp, he also revealed an other side of him he probably wanted to keep hidden from them._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______________Luffy was looking at the ground. He was trying to ignore everyone's stares. He was afraid of what they would think of him. Would they judge him for what he was now? For what he did to that guard? Would they want him to leave?_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______________Suddenly, someone wrapped their arms around him. His eyes widen and he tensed slightly in the embrace. He recognized the curly hair as Usopp's._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______________"Thank you. Thank you for saving my life, Luffy."_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______________All the fear had left Usopp for a moment. He wasn't even bothered by the other teen's appearance. Right now, he was just hugging his friend._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______________After a few seconds, he felt Luffy relax in his embrace and arms wrapped themselves around him. He felt the other teen smile against his shoulder._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______________Luffy's fear of being rejected by his own friends slowly faded away the longer the embrace lasted. It was weird how one simple gesture could mean so much to someone. He knew his appearance probably wouldn't be accepted right away, but maybe it would be alright after all._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______________Maybe everything would be fine._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally things are happening in this fanfiction.  
> I really liked writing this chapter (even though there isn't much happy shit in it). I know some of you who read this probably won't like the way this fanfic is going, and I apologize for that, but I hope most of you liked it!  
> Thank you all for reading!


	12. The truth

After the embrace between Usopp and Luffy ended, Chopper once again started working on the wounded teen in front of him. He had seen blood coming from Luffy's back and he needed to know how bad the wound was. Also, he needed some of the teen's blood. Luffy had been shot with _something _and he needed to make sure it wasn't some kind of poison.__

____

He grabbed a test tube and took a little bit of Luffy's blood with a needle. The other teen grimaced as the doctor did so. Needles still weren't his favourite thing. When Chopper had enough he put some chemicals in the blood and shook the tube. After a short while the liquid turned a certain colour and the young doctor sighed in relief. It was just a very strong anesthetic and not some kind of poison. This made him wonder how Luffy was still awake and not knocked out by the drug. The teen probably had a strong will to stay conscious.

Now he was sure Luffy wasn't poisoned, he could move on to Luffy's back.

However, since Luffy was sitting on one of the beds, the teen's back was turned towards the wall. The young doctor couldn't see the wound this way. Chopper knew that letting the other teen stand wouldn't be a good idea considering Luffy looked ready to pass out any minute. He looked around the room. Maybe if he could.. there!

The doctor grabbed a large, wooden chair that was standing in the corner of the infirmary for a reason he could not remember and placed it in the centre of the room. Everyone looked at him in confusion. The doctor turned to look at the black-haired teen sitting on one of the beds.

"Luffy, I need you to come sit on this chair here, backwards. I want to take a look at your back." Chopper said. Luffy stood up with the help of Zoro, his wings and tail dragged over the bed as he stepped away from it.

The teen sat down on the chair with his back facing the doctor. He laid his arms on the chair's backrest. His wings were tightly folded and pressed against his back. The chair was a little big for the teen as his feet barely touched the floor.

The doctor stepped closer to the teen's back, careful not to step on the long tail. He could now see the other's new appearance more clearly.

The teen's shorts had ripped at the place where the tail had penetrated the cloth. The tail was longer than Luffy's body and was covered in dark red, almost black coloured fur. At the end of the tail was a tuft of longer, red hair. At the base of the tail were a few small spines with a dark red colour.

Luffy's skin colour had changed. It was a little bit darker than normal and had a somewhat red colour to it. At some places the skin colour was a lot darker than normal, like at the places where the tail and the wings were attached to the teen's body. The teen's forearms and lower legs had turned an almost black colour.

On the teen's head were two curved horns. They kind of resembled those of a goat. Luffy's ears had changed too. They were now more pointy. The nails on the teen's hands had grown. They were now longer and pointier. Luffy's irises were red instead of the dark colour they used to have and he had vertical slit pupils.

The teen's red cardigan had ripped apart when the bat-like wings had appeared on Luffy's back. The wings were large, making the others wonder where he had kept them all this time. They were currently folded, but the colours were still visible. The slightly transparent wing membrane had a red colour which was a few shades darker than the colour of the hair at the end of the tail. The other parts of the wings had the same colour as the tail. There was one sharp, curved claw at the carpus.

"Luffy, can you move your wings to the side and away from your back? They're kind of in the way." Chopper said. The other teen did what he had been told and the wings slowly moved to the side to make room for the doctor.

Luffy's wings unfolded as he moved them to the side. That's when the others saw that something was wrong with one of them.

The left wing was in bad shape. The outer digit was clearly broken and a lot of the membrane in between the broken digit and the digit next to that one was gone. The remaining pieces of membrane looked like they had been burned. At the same time, it looked like the wounds had already healed for the most part because there were no open and bleeding wounds.

"W-what happened to your wing?" Chopper stuttered. Luffy didn't answer at first, but then put his hand on his chest, on the place where his X-shaped scar was. The doctor quickly realized what the teen meant.

"You got these wounds the same way you got the wound on your chest?" He asked. The other teen nodded. "Did you get the wounds around the same time?"

Another nod.

Chopper reached his hand out to the injured wing and gently touched it. The limb flinched and Luffy made a noise of discomfort. Even though it looked partly healed, it apparently still hurt.

The doctor pulled his hand away. He stared at the wing while thinking what to do. The broken bone had to be set, that's for sure. He didn't know if he could do anything about the membrane. A large part was missing and he couldn't possibly get that back.

Luffy folded his wings slightly, still leaving enough room for Chopper to inspect him, and rested the digits on the ground. He winched as the broken digit touched the floor. Holding his wings up had begun to tire him out. Normally he wouldn't have this problem, but now even keeping his eyes open proved to be quite a task for him.

He just wanted to go to sleep.

Chopper decided to inspect the teen's back first before moving on to the injured wing. After all, the wound on Luffy's back was what he wanted to inspect to begin with.

He got closer to the other teen's back, careful not to accidentally touch the wings. The bleeding seemed to have stopped as there was no fresh blood streaming down Luffy's back. The doctor now saw that the trail of blood started at the places where the wings were attached to the teen's back.

When the doctor took a closer look, he found no open wounds. He only saw shallow cuts surrounding the places where the wings were attached. It looked like the skin of Luffy's back had attached itself to the beginnings of the wings which probably caused the bleeding to stop.

Seeing the cuts on the other's back, Chopper was reminded of the scars he had seen on Luffy's back a while ago. He couldn't see them now because the wings were attached to the teen on the same places where the scars had been.

"Luffy, do your wings have something to do with the large scars on your back?" The doctor asked.

No response.

"Luffy?" Chopper called out as he gently touched the teen's shoulder from behind. Other than the small shiver that went down the other's spine, the doctor didn't get a reaction.

"Chopper, I think he fell asleep." Zoro said. Chopper stepped away from the teen's back and walked around Luffy. When he saw the teen's relaxed face with closed eyes, he confirmed that Luffy was indeed asleep.

Luffy's head rested on his arms, which in their turn rested on the chair's backrest. The tail was completely slack. There was a slight movement in the wings as they were still relaxing, showing that the teen had fallen asleep just moments ago.

Chopper sighed. He would ask all the questions flooding his mind later when Luffy woke up.

The doctor grabbed a rag, soaked it in water and carefully started to remove the blood from the sleeping teen's back. Luffy continued sleeping, not bothered by the water trailing down his back.

The wounds the left wing had sustained seemed painful, but they didn't endanger Luffy's health. And, like Luffy had told him, he got these wounds at the same time as the one on his chest, so that meant that he got them about a month ago. It wouldn't matter if Luffy had to live with these wounds one more day, so the doctor decided to look at the injuries the next day after he returned from school and when Luffy had woken up.

At some point, Sanji had left to make dinner. He wanted to stay, but he knew everyone was hungry, especially after the fight they just had with the Government.

Chopper had just finished cleaning Luffy's back when the cook yelled that dinner was. One by one the friends started to leave the room until only Chopper, Usopp and Zoro were left with Luffy in the infirmary.

The doctor had asked Usopp to stay a little longer so he could properly stitch the wound in the teen's hand. Chopper had only wrapped the injured hand with bandages before so he could move on to Luffy. The other teen's wound had been worse than the sniper's and needed to be cared for immediately.

Fortunately, the bullet that hit the sniper's hand hadn't caused much damage and Usopp only needed a few stitches.

"Chopper, can Luffy sleep here for now? I don't really want to move him too much." Zoro said to the doctor. Their room was upstairs and he didn't want to carry Luffy up there and risk accidentally hurting the teen.

"Of course." The doctor replied. Chopper finished the last stitch in Usopp's hand and wrapped it with bandages. He then started cleaning and putting away the medical supplies he had used.

Zoro gently lifted his sleeping friend off the chair. The peaceful look on the teen's face looked pained for a second when the swordsman pressed the wings against the teen's back to pick him up easier. Luckily, the bed was only a few feet away so the pain didn't last long. Zoro laid his friend down on his side so he wouldn't lie on his wings and tail. He then covered the sleeping teen with a blanket.

He and the other two then left the room to join the others at dinner. Everyone had already started eating their meal when they entered the room.

They all ate in silence. The tension in the air could clearly be felt. Usopp had trouble with eating. He had been shot in his good hand and found it very difficult to hold his cutlery. Chopper eventually decided to help his friend.

Everyone stayed seated after they finished eating. No one said a word for the next few minutes before, finally, someone decided to speak.

"Zoro, would you care to explain a few things to us?" Robin asked, though it sounded more like a demand.

Zoro sighed. He knew this was coming. "What do you want me to explain?" He questioned.

"Let's start with what Luffy is. He clearly isn't a normal human." The woman said. The others nodded. They all wanted to know the answer to this question.

"I have to disappoint you. I don't know what Luffy is." Zoro said. "As far as I know, there is no name for what he is. There is no explanation for why he looks like this either. His existence is a mystery."

Robin frowned. "Then, can you answer this question? What is the real reason the Government is after you two?" She asked. It seemed like she was going to be the one who questioned the man while the others just watched and listened.

Zoro was thinking of whenever to answer the question or not. He decided to do it anyway. They were friends and they had already seen Luffy's other form. "I worked for the Government as a guard. I was one of the guards who had to keep an eye on Luffy.

Luffy was a prisoner there. From what I know, he was captured when he was a little kid and held captive ever since." The swordsman told the group. Everyone's facial expression changed from a blank look to an angry expression when they heard that one of their friends had been imprisoned for years. Not only that, but Luffy had been a _child _when he was captured. They once again cursed the Government for being so cruel.__

____

__

"Am I safe to assume Luffy was held captive for being.. not completely human?" The dark-haired woman asked. She struggled to find a word to call Luffy's new appearance.

"Yes, that's right." Zoro answered.

Robin was angry. Angry that the Government imprisoned a kid just because he was different. On the other hand, so could understand that the Government had to take action when an unknown creature, which was a possible threat to civilians, had been sighted.

But she found that Luffy was an exception. In the month she had known him, she had seen that he was very capable of living like a normal human. In fact, they hadn't even noticed that he was different than them. Until today, he had never even showed any sign of being a threat to anyone.

Robin was about to ask another question when Zoro spoke. "I think it would be better to continue our conversation when Luffy has woken up." He said. The others agreed. It would be better to have a conversation about someone when the person was actually with them and could answer questions as well.

"Also, you don't need to worry about your safety when you're in Luffy's presence. He won't hurt any of you. How he acted when he killed that guard only happened twice before. Both in stressful situations. It won't happen unless there's a good reason for it." Zoro told the rest. He had seen everyone's reactions to Luffy's new appearance and knew they feared the teen a little bit now. He wanted to assure them they didn't have to be afraid.

"He might look different now but, despite his appearance, it's still him. Luffy is still the same person he was a few hours ago. He is still the same person you all befriended." The man added.

The others looked at him. What he had said seemed to have dropped the tension a little bit. They wanted to believe him, and most did, but some would probably stay a bit wary of Luffy for the next couple of days.

They then decided to go to bed. Tomorrow was Monday so most of them had to go to work or school and needed to be rested well. They said goodnight and all left to go upstairs to their rooms. All except Zoro.

The swordsman went to the infirmary, for once not getting lost, and took a seat on the second bed in the room. Luffy was still sleeping on the other bed. The teen's strawhat laid on the Chopper's desk. It had fallen on the ground after Luffy changed and Zoro had picked it up and put it on the desk after they entered the infirmary.

Zoro watched his friend for a while before he, too, fell asleep.

* * *

Monday morning and afternoon passed by really fast. About half of the friends had left the house in the morning to go to work or school. Luffy had slept through most of the day and woke up only an hour before everyone would return home.

Once Chopper returned from school, he went to see how Luffy was doing. The teen in question was hanging out on the couch with Zoro while watching some television. He was sitting on the backrest of the couch with wings and tail dangling on the other side.

The two men looked in Chopper's direction as he entered the room. They greeted each other and the youngest of the three joined the other two on the couch.

"Luffy, how do you feel?" The doctor asked. Luffy shrugged and signed with his hands.

_I feel fine. The wound aches a little. ___

____

____

Chopper nodded in understanding. "And how's your wing?" He asked.

_It hurts when I move it too much. ___

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____

The doctor had expected that. It did look painful.

"Why don't we go take a look at it now. Then I can see what I can do about it." He said to the other. Luffy nodded, knowing that Chopper wouldn't do anything he didn't want. He hopped off the couch and left the room with Chopper, Zoro following them closely.

They entered the infirmary and Luffy took place on the wooden chair that was still standing in the middle of the room. He sat in the same position as the night before. He knew Chopper needed easy access to his back and wings and this position was best suited for that.

The doctor started to inspect the wings. The right one was in good condition while the left wing looked terrible.

The outer digit was clearly broken in the middle. The lower part of the digit was hanging loosely under the upper part. The red membrane between the broken digit and the next was gone for the most part and the remaining pieces had burned edges.

Chopper carefully touched the burned membrane. The texture was something he had never felt before. It felt like a combination of rubber and the wing membrane of a bat. It was strong and flexible at the same time. This membrane could be a problem..

"To be honest, I don't really know what to do about the missing membrane. I haven't seen any material like this, so I can't replace it." The doctor said. "And because some of it is burned and unusable, I have to remove that too. I'm afraid a large piece of the membrane is going to be gone.

Of course, you can tell me to leave the burned membrane so you can keep a little bit of it, but I don't think that's going to help much." He finished. Luffy turned his head and moved his wing so he was able to see the damage. He hadn't had a clear look at his injured wing himself. He now could see what Chopper meant by 'a large piece' of membrane. It was basically all of the membrane between the two outer digits.

"I'm going to have to straighten the broken bone, that's one thing that's for sure. My only question is if you allow me to remove some of the burned membrane now so it won't irritate the digit when I put on a cast." Chopper said. Luffy stared at his wounded wing for a bit longer, taking in the injuries, before nodding and giving the doctor permission to do what he needed to.

Now he had gotten permission, the young doctor got to work. He first gave Luffy something that would reduce the pain. He then grabbed some medical tools and got to work.

The doctor started to carefully remove the burned membrane. Most, if not all, the membrane attached to the broken digit had to be removed. The burned membrane attached to the other digit had to be removed eventually, but not now. Chopper's priority was to fix the broken bone. Luffy didn't make any sound while the young doctor worked. Zoro kept watching them from the corner of the room.

When all the burned and useless membrane was removed, the doctor moved on to the broken digit. He touched it to feel where the fracture was. It didn't feel like it was broken in several places, so that was good.

He straightened the bone, earning a painful groan from Luffy, and then proceed to put the plaster of a cast on the broken digit. When he was done he put away his tools and gave the cast time to dry.

"I don't know how long it will take to heal considering you healed pretty fast before, but you can't let your wing 'disappear' until the cast is removed." Chopper told Luffy. The doctor, and probably most of his friends, still wondered where those wings came from in the first place.

Once they were done with everything, they left the infirmary and returned to the living room. By now everyone had returned home and most had disappeared to their usual spots in the house.

It wouldn't be long until dinner was ready, so the three decided to watch some television to pass the time.

* * *

Dinner came and everyone took a seat at the table. The atmosphere in the room was better than yesterday, but there was still a slightly tense silence. Luffy was sitting on a barstool so there was no backrest that could get in the way of his wings.

The dark-haired teen was sitting in between Zoro and Chopper. Some people at the table occasionally glanced at the teen as they ate, but Luffy didn't notice. Everyone once again stayed seated after they finished their meal. They still had a few questions that needed to be answered.

"Before we start asking our questions, Luffy how are your wounds?" Robin asked. She was once again the one who started asking questions. Luffy signed something as he gave a reassuring smile.

_I'm fine. The wounds don't hurt that much. ___

____

____

"I'm glad to hear that." Robin smiled. The dark-haired woman had learned Luffy's sign-language fairly quick. Besides Zoro, Chopper and Usopp she was the one who could understand the teen's sign language best.

"Now, we have some questions we would like answered." Robin continued. "Yesterday I asked Zoro if he knew what you are, but he didn't know. Parhaps you have an answer to that question?" She asked. Luffy shook his head.

Chopper frowned. "You really don't know what you are? Were you born this way?" He asked. Luffy nodded.

_No one ever told me what I am, so I don't know. I've been like this for as long as I can remember. ___

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"Nobody told you? What about your parents? Didn't they tell you something?" Usopp asked.

_I don't have parents. ___

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____

"You don't? Not even when you were little?" The youngest member of the group asked. Luffy shook his head. "Then, who took care of you when you were still too young to do things by yourself?" Robin asked.

The light in Luffy's eyes vanished slightly and he looked away. Zoro put his hand on the other's arm and gave a light squeeze. He was the only one who knew why the teen had this reaction to that question. He knew the teen still wasn't at peace with the loss.

"His brother did." The swordsman answered for the teen. That answer only brought up more questions. They all guessed that something bad must have happened to the teen's brother by Luffy's reaction. Most wanted to leave that topic for an other time, but _someone _was just too curious.__

____

____

"What happened to his brother?" The long-nosed teen asked. Neither Luffy nor Zoro answered right away. Usopp realized that this might be a very sensitive topic and was about to tell them they didn't have to answer when Luffy looked up.

What they saw in his blood-red eyes were both sadness and anger. Other emotions could be seen as well, but those two stood out the most. He made one single movement with his hand and everyone understood immediately what had happened.

The room stayed silent. Everyone wanted to know how it had happened, but it just didn't feel right to speak right now. They all knew how it felt to lose a loved one, but only a few knew the same pain Luffy had. Only a few knew how it felt when a loved one got killed.

The room stayed quiet for a few more minutes. Usopp felt like he was the cause of the uncomfortable silence and decided he was the one who needed to break that silence. He needed to distract everyone from this gloomy subject by bringing up an other topic. However, he didn't exactly know which questions were 'safe' to ask.

"Luffy, Zoro, how did you two meet?" He finally asked. Luffy looked up at him, stared at the other teen for a few seconds, before turning to Zoro.

The green-haired man understood that his friend wanted him to tell the others the story and started talking. "I met Luffy a few years ago after I got promoted. I became a guard for the lowest level, which is the place where they hold all secret captives. Luffy and his brother were held there as well." He told the others.

"What exactly does a 'guard' mean in that place? Do they only guard things or..?" The blond cook asked as he lit a cigarette, earning a glare from Chopper. The doctor didn't like it when Sanji smoked.

"Guards don't only guard things. They also deliver food to prisoners, move prisoners from place to place and sometimes even execute them. It depends on which level guard you are. The higher you are, the more important your job is." Zoro explained.

"Are you a high-level guard?" Robin asked. The man nodded. "I was one of the highest. I doubt I'll ever be a guard there again." He said.

Brook frowned. "If you were a high level guard, the Government really must have trusted you a lot. Why did you betrayed them?" He asked. The other swordsman smiled.

"Like you might have guessed, I didn't only guard Luffy and his brother. I also became good friends with them. At some point they became more important to me than my job.

On my first day as a level seven guard I was told not to interact with Luffy or his brother. They were, according to the other guards, just dumb animals without any feelings. The only thing I had to do was watch them for any kind of weird behavior and make sure they didn't escape and stayed alive.

My negative opinion of the brothers changed a few weeks later. I discovered that they _did _have feelings. They were just like normal humans. So, against the will of my superiors, I began to talk with them. Years passed and we became close friends." Zoro finished. "And I guess that you helped Luffy escape?" Robin asked. The man nodded.__

____

____

The group didn't really know how to think about all this. There was a lot of new information they'd gotten these past two days and it was hard to progress it all.

"Now, I have to ask." Zoro continued. "Is it okay if Luffy and I stay a little while longer? Just until Luffy's wounds have healed." Zoro asked. Almost all of their friends nodded immediately, happy by the idea that the two could stay longer.

"But can't you and Luffy come live with us? We now know about Luffy, and I don't think any of us mind he is different, so you don't have to be afraid of us rejecting or betraying you!" Chopper exclaimed hopefully. Luffy seem to brighten up at the idea as well.

Zoro sighed. "We can't. It's not that I'm afraid of you betraying us. It's just.. We all will be in danger if we stay here. They, the Government, will come back for us. They will do everything in their power to get Luffy back in their possession. We don't want you to get involved." Hope faded from almost everyone's face as he said this.

"But we are already involved." Usopp said. Everyone turned to look at him. "The Government somehow discovered you were here and came to our house. We fought with them, maybe even killed some of them. The Government won't forgive us. Not only that, but they also found out Robin is here. It won't matter if you leave or not, they _will _come back here."__

____

____

'He does have a point there.' The green-haired man thought. One by one, the friends started to agree with Usopp. While all of them didn't like the idea of being haunted by the Government, some saw this as an opportunity to convince their friends to stay. Well, convince _Zoro _to stay. Luffy didn't want to leave to begin with.__

____

____

Zoro sighed. "I'll have to think about this.." He said. "But for now, I assume we're allowed to stay?" The man asked. Several members of the group nodded. Others just smiled. By now, most of the fear the friends had for Luffy had vanished. He might look different but, like Zoro had said earlier, he was still the same person.

"Alright, that's decided then. Thank you." Zoro said. He smiled. He was glad that their friends had accepted Luffy even now they knew he was different. He knew Luffy was happy too, especially now they had to stay longer.

Maybe they really should come live here.

* * *

-Somewhere else-

Akainu slammed his fist down on his desk and cursed. He had just received the report about the attack on their targets. It had taken them a long time to get that report ready. Because of that he already suspected the guards failed to collect their targets.

But now he had read the report and he was angry. They hadn't only lost, they had been _crushed _by the enemies' strength. Couldn't those idiots handle a few citizens? On top of that, the guards had run away! They ran away from one of their targets! Just the sight of that monster had frightened them enough to flee. He hadn't expected them to be such cowards.__

____

____

He hadn't expected D-3 to show his true form either. This could be a problem. The people he was staying with had also seen his demonic appearance. If they decided to make the two leave he could lose track of them. And what if they tell other people about it? They had to be detained. Nico Robin had been seen there was well. She is a threat to the Government and needed to be eliminated.

"Sir, should we arrange a new attack?" One of his subordinates asked. The man behind the desk glared at him, making the guard shiver in fear. "Of course you should plan a new attack! You should have started with that already!" He said loudly. "The people they're staying with have to be arrested as well. Now go and prepare a new attack."

The other man wasted no time getting out of there. Akainu sat down again, not having realized he stood up, and sighed. He would land a few more attacks on the house and its inhabitants to try and arrest them all. It those attacks don't work..

..He will have to use plan B.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suck at explaining things in English (it's not my original language) so I'm sorry if you couldn't understand something (like things about the wings or the injuries. Explaining that was hell. I DON'T KNOW ALL THOSE WORDS!).
> 
> Also, I have uploaded two pieces of fanart of this story on my DeviantArt account (FireArrowAce). Both are of Luffy's new form.
> 
> The first one was made more than a year ago. The painting (created on the computer with my mouse) is basically the inspiration for this story. Because it has been made so long ago it isn't very accurate anymore. Some things about Luffy's appearance have changed in time, but the painting still gives a good idea of what Luffy looks like. 
> 
> The second piece of art (a drawing made on paper) was made a few months back. It's actually a scene from this chapter (kind of). If you want to know how the injury of Luffy's wing looks like I would suggest taking a look at this drawing. 
> 
> There is a third one, but that one is more relevent to the next chapter.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Thank you so much for reading!


	13. Troubled feelings

It was the fourth day after Luffy's 'other form' had been revealed. It was noon and the black-haired teen was sitting on the couch, alone. About half of the house's inhabitants had left the building to go to work or school.

The remaining members of the group were all somewhere in the house by themselves. Robin was reading a book in the kitchen, Franky was in his personal workplace and Zoro was probably taking a nap who knows where.

The television was on, but Luffy wasn't paying much attention to it. He was sitting on the backrest, his wings and tail dangling over the edge at the other side of the couch. He had pulled his legs to his body and had his arms wrapped around them. His head rested on his knees while he stared at the television screen.

He had put some new clothes on because his other ones had ripped apart and were covered in blood from the day when he transformed. He still couldn't wear a shirt since his wings were in the way, but he wasn't bothered by that. Luffy's tail hung over his shorts because he didn't want to make a hole in them to put his tail through and ruin the shorts in the progress.

Even though he was looking at the television where an interesting movie was playing, Luffy's thoughts were elsewhere.

He had been, and still was, very glad that he and Zoro had been allowed to stay a little longer and the proposition to come live here had made him even more excited. But something was bothering him. And that something made him less happy.

Ever since he had to reveal his other form a few days ago, Luffy had noticed that his friends were acting a bit different around him now. It wasn't that big of a surprise. They now knew he wasn't human and, even though they had said they didn't mind him being different, it was a normal reaction for them to act different around him now.

It wasn't that different than normal. It was just that, for example, his friends sat a few inches further away from him than before he had revealed his other form. Or the strange looks they sometimes gave him when they thought he wasn't looking.

He couldn't really blame them though. He isn't human. He is.. an unknown creature. They don't know what he's capable of. _He himself _doesn't know what he's capable of. Of course they would be more careful around him now.__

____

But still, it wasn't a nice feeling.

He felt like some of the trust his friends had in him had faded away. He wondered if his friends would ever completely trust him again. Deep down he knew they would.

"What's on your mind?" A voice said from beside him. Luffy snapped out of his thoughts and lifted his head off his knees to look at his green-haired friend. Zoro had probably just returned from the kitchen judging from the bottle of beer in his hand.

_Nothing much. ___

____

"You know you can tell me anything, right?"

_It's nothing, really. ___

____

____

"Even without speaking, you're a terrible liar."

Luffy sighed. He really hated his bad lying skills.

_I was just thinking about things. ___

____

____

Zoro sat down on the couch beside him and took a swig of his bottle of beer. He sighed in delight of the taste of the liquid. He then turned his attention back to his friend.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked. Luffy shook his head 'no' and laid his head back on his knees. He didn't feel the need to tell Zoro about his thoughts right now. The teen continued to stare at the television screen. Zoro stared at him for a few more seconds before he, too, started to watch the movie.

"Just tell me if you want to talk, okay?" The man said. Luffy nodded. The two then continued to watch the movie in each other's presence. Zoro seemed to be the only one who was really comfortable with being close to him, which wasn't really strange considering Zoro had known about his other form for years.

The teen sighed again. Why wasn't he born normal like other people?

* * *

Several hours passed and, one by one, the remaining members of the group returned home. Like usual, they all went to do their own thing. Luffy stayed seated on the couch backrest watching television with Zoro until the older man left to take a nap.

The teen's stomach grumbled and he groaned. He hated it when Sanji was out working all day. It meant that the blond man couldn't make them lunch. They all had to make their own, but it was never as good as Sanji's.

Now, the cook was back home and was preparing dinner. The delicious smell coming from the kitchen wasn't really helping the teen's empty stomach.

The young man stood up from the couch and made his way to the kitchen. It would take another hour or so for dinner to be ready, so maybe the cook would give him a snack or something. As Luffy stepped into the kitchen, Sanji noticed his entry almost immediately and turned around to face the teen.

"What brings you here, Luffy? Are you hungry?" The blond man asked. Luffy nodded and sat down on his barstool at the dinner table. Sanji turned back to the food he was preparing and put some of it on a plate before giving the plate to the other man.

Luffy raised an eyebrow. Normally, Sanji wouldn't be so quick to give him something to eat, let alone give him some of the food that was meant for dinner.

This was the first time he had asked the cook for food since his other form had been revealed, so maybe that was the cause of this somewhat strange behaviour. The dark-haired teen accepted the food anyway and cleared the plate within a minute.

_What are we eating tonight? ___

____

____

The cook wasn't that great with Luffy's sign language, but he knew from experience that the teen was asking about the food. "Just some vegetables and meat." He answered. Luffy nodded in understanding and stared at the food still cooking on the stove.

The cook then seemed to remember something. He once again turned to face the black-haired teen before speaking.

"Hey Luffy, I was wondering. Because you are 'different' than normal humans, do you need other kinds of food as well? I'm a cook and I want whoever eats my food to enjoy themselves. Is there something you can't eat or something you must eat? Or anything you don't like?" Sanji asked.

Luffy thought for a short while before answering.

_I don't know. Everything you make tastes amazing. It's way better than the crap they fed me in the place I came from. The only thing I can think of is that I would like more food. I somehow don't feel full enough after eating. ___

____

____

The cook nodded. He had understood most of what the other had said and now knew what he wanted to know. "Okay, see you at dinner then." He said before turning back to the food on the stove. The black-haired teen got up from his barstool and left the kitchen. Luffy wasn't sure what he was going to do in the time left before dinner. He'll probably watch (actually watch) some television now.

* * *

It was evening and everyone was at the dinner table. Sanji had made slightly more food for Luffy, but not too much since he hadn't been prepared enough to make as much food as Luffy would probably need. Still, the dark-haired teen was glad he now had more to eat.

The group of friends were just eating and talking, like normal, when suddenly a very loud bang could be heard at the back of the house. It sounded like an explosion. Everyone looked at each other, startled.

"What the hell was that?!" Nami asked. No one replied. They had never heard a sound like this near their home because they lived so far into the woods. One by one, all friends stood up from their chairs. They began to make their way to the place where they heard the bang.

When they arrived at the back of the house they were met with a huge hole in the wall. The Government's men were standing outside waiting for them, guns aimed and ready to fire.

Franky sunk to his knees ashe saw the damage done to his house. "My house! There's a hole in my house! What did Sunny ever do wrong!" He whined dramatically.

"I don't think this hole is our main issue here." Usopp said nervously. There were considerably less guards than last time, but the small group of friends was still badly outnumbered. The rest of the guards were probably still hurt or they were just too scared to come.

"You are all to be arrested on behalf of the Government. If you collaborate peacefully, none of you will get hurt." A voice somewhere in the crowd yelled. Had their leader hidden himself in the mass of people?

The friends inwardly sighed. Even though the enemy had just said they would all be arrested, the friends knew that they were here for the 'criminals' under them, especially Luffy. Had the Government already forgotten that they would never hand their friends over to them?

"We won't give them to you. Now, get on with the fight. Dinner's getting cold and I hate wasting food." Sanji said annoyed. The others agreed with the cook. They really didn't want to waste more time than needed.

Luffy took that moment to make his way to the front of the group of friends. He had been standing in the middle of his group out of sight because, to he honest, he didn't want to face the Government. But he felt like _he _needed to deal with this problem. He was the reason everyone was in this mess to begin with, so this was his responsibility.__

____

The crowd before him gasped in shock as they saw him. The guards backed away from him in fear as they saw his appearance.

"It's the demon!"

They called him more awful words, like 'Monster' and 'Devil'. Hurt flashed across Luffy's face. Even though he hated those people, the words they yelled still hurt.

Anger flared up inside everyone else as their friend was called all those horrible names. Luffy was everything but a monster. How could those people call him a demon when they didn't even know how nice the teen was?

"Franky, what are you doing?" Usopp's voice suddenly cut through the tense silence. Said blue-haired friend had been tapping on the screen of his phone at a fast pace for the last minute or so. Some of his friends turned around to look at him.

"Wait a moment.. there!" Franky exclaimed as he pressed one last button on his phone. By now, most of his friends had turned to look at him in confusion. The backyard stayed silent for a few seconds before, suddenly, the house started to shake. Everyone looked at the building in shock as small doors opened in the walls and iron objects started emerge from inside.

"Franky? Are those what I think they are?" Robin asked. The man only laughed. Usopp's eyes widen. "I thought we agreed to not build those?!" He yelled. Franky smirked. "But they come in handy, don't they?"

Nami sighed. "Of course our house has cannons. Where did you even get the money to do that?" She asked, hoping that he didn't use her-, sorry, _their _saved money.__

____

____

"I know people.." Was the only explination she got.

Luffy looked at the transforming house in amazement. He thought it was one of the coolest things ever. Chopper, too, stared at the building with stars in his eyes. Brook laughed at what his blue-haired friend had done while Sanji and Zoro just stared at the sight before them without any real surprise.

The Government's men readied their weapons. They were prepared for battle. Little did they know that this 'battle' wasn't going to be very long.

"I would recommend taking a few steps back. This won't take long." Franky said to his friends with a smirk. The friends did what them was told. Luffy, too, stepped back as Franky said this. The teen still wanted to help defeat the guards, but if his friend wanted to do this, he would let him.

The leader of the enemies then gave the order to attack. The guards let out a battle cry before storming towards the small group of people before them.

"Take this!" Franky yelled and pressed a button on his phone. The cannons aimed at the approaching guards and fired. The Government's people stopped dead in their tracks before trying to run away from the cannon fire.

The blue-haired mechanic only smirked while the rest of the friends watched in amazement as the cannon fire made the guards run round in circles to avoid getting hit.

"You shouldn't have damaged the Thousand Sunny!" Franky yelled with a grin. He couldn't help but smile as his creation ruined the enemy's plan. Sure, his house now had a huge hole in the wall, but at least he got to try out his cannons.

It didn't take the Government's men long to realize they weren't going to win this fight. They didn't even wait for the order to retreat as they all ran back in the direction they came from.

Luffy watched as the last of the Government's men disappeared in the woods. One of his friends had scared them all away with his creation and the black-haired teen didn't have to do anything.

He felt a little bit bad because he felt like those guards were mostly his problem. His friends shouldn't have to deal with them for him.

Franky walked to stand beside Luffy and wrapped an arm around the teen's shoulders, careful to avoid the broken wing. The dark-haired teen flinched slightly at the contact, still not fully used to suddenly being touched, but that went unnoticed by the taller man.

"You don't have to fight them alone. Not now, not ever. You got that?" The man asked. He had seen the look on the younger's face and knew what Luffy had been thinking. The teen hesitated before nodding.

"Good." The other man said before letting go of Luffy's shoulders. "You guys go on with dinner. I'm going to fix the Sunny first." Franky said. The other's nodded in understanding and everyone went back inside.

Luffy walked at the back of the group with Zoro. The black-haired teen didn't really know what to think of the encounter with the guards just now. This was the second time in less than a week that the Government's men had come to their house. How many times would they try to get them? And would he and his friends be able to fight them off every time?

_Do you think they'll ever stop coming after us? ___

____

____

He asked Zoro this. The older man thought about it. "I don't think they'll stop anytime soon, but if they keep losing fights like this, the Government must at some point accept the fact that they can't win." Zoro told the other. "But this was only the second time we have encountered them, so be prepared to see them more often."

Luffy nodded before sighing. He really hoped he and his friends wouldn't have to fight the Government for the rest of their lives.

* * *

About a week passed without any movements from the Government's side. The group of friends was prepared for an attack at any time of the day. They arranged that at least four people were at home every day and that the ones at work or school were reachable by phone.

Today, only Luffy, Zoro, Chopper and Franky were at home. The rest of the group was either at work or (in Usopp's case) at school. Franky was finishing his work at their house. He had fixed the Sunny days ago, but he wanted to improve some things in case they were attacked again. He said something about more cannons and things like that.

Luffy's left wing was healing quite nicely. Like said before, he was a very fast healer. So fast in fact that Chopper decided that it was safe to remove the cast. That's why the two of them were in the infirmary right now. Zoro wasn't with them at the moment. Luffy hadn't bothered to go find him first before going to the infirmary with Chopper. He was just too glad that damn cast would be removed.

The young doctor removed the cast before inspecting the bone. He concluded that the digit was healed for the most part. Chopper then wrapped the previously broken bone in bandages.

"Alright, that should do it. You still need to rest your wing though. I have put a few bandages around it to prevent it from moving too much." The doctor said. The other teen nodded as he looked at his bandaged wing. After a brief inspection of his wing, Luffy looked back at his friend and smiled.

_Thank you. You're a great doctor. ___

____

____

Chopper smiled and went to put away the supplies he had used. While the younger teen did that, Luffy looked back at his appearance. His sad expression went unnoticed by the doctor. He took in his tail and bat-like wings. His hand reached up to touch one of his pointed ears.

This, whatever he was, was the cause of all the things that had gone wrong in his life. He didn't like it. He didn't like it at all! He wanted to a normal human like everyone else.

As he reached his hand higher and touched his horns, he noticed that they were longer than the last time he'd felt them. His horns had been growing a lot in the last few months. Now he thought about it, all his non-human features had been getting larger during the last year. His wings, for example, used to be about half his height but now they're almost as long as him.

In Luffy's eyes, this was a sign that he was losing more of his human self and was beginning to look more like a real monster.

It was true that he could make these monster-like features disappear. It was something he was going to do as soon as Chopper gave him premission to transform back to his human form. But then he was only temporarily hiding his true appearance. He would have to change back to his other form every once in a while. In other words, the monster would still be inside of him.

The teen bit on his lip in frustration. Was there a way to stop this monster from growing? Was there a way for him to get rid of all this? He didn't want to be like this, a demon.

"Luffy? Are you okay?" Chopper's voice cut through his thoughts. Luffy lowered his hand and looked at the other teen. The young doctor had a concerned expression on his face.

An idea came up in Luffy's mind. Chopper was a doctor, so maybe he could do something about this.

The black-haired teen thought about his next words before using his sign language to ask his question.

_Chopper, do you think you can do something about this demon-like appearance? ___

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____

The doctor looked at him with confusion. "Do something about your appearance? What do you mean by that?" He asked. The other teen sighed and sat down on the bed, being mindful of his wings and tail.

_I mean, can you make my wings, tail and all those other things disappear? ___

____

____

The other teen stared at him in shock. "What? I can't make those disappear, Luffy. They belong to you, so you shouldn't change that in any way!" Chopper said. The other teen hesitated before signing once more.

_But I don't like it. It scares people. I know you and the rest of our friends are afraid of it. Even I am afraid of it. This form only reminds me of pain and suffering. I want it to be gone. ___

__

__

__

The young doctor's eyes softened as he saw the sad and troubled look on his friend's face. The teen was clearly struggling with it. But Chopper knew he couldn't help.

The younger teen put his hand on the other's shoulder. "I understand why you feel that way, but I don't think you should do anything to change it. It's just the outside, and the outside doesn't matter to me or any of your other friends. It's all about who you are on the inside. We will remain friends as long as you stay the way you are on the inside. You are an amazing person, Luffy. Don't forget that. It'll take some time, but everybody will get used to your other form eventually."

Luffy thought about those words. He knew his friend was right. The outside wouldn't matter to the ones who love him as long as he was a good person. But, what if that changed too? What if his appearance wasn't the only thing that will eventually become a monster?

"I forgot to ask before, but is there perhaps a reason why you can't speak? Zoro said you had an accident a few years ago. Is that the truth or did something else happen?" Chopper suddenly asked, successfully changing the subject.

Luffy forgot his previous negative thoughts and looked back at his friend. To be honest, he didn't really know what happened to his voice.

_I don't know. I just suddenly wasn't able to speak anymore. It happened about two years ago. ___

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____

The doctor nodded in understanding. "I see. Do you know anything else. Like, did it hurt to try to speak after you just lost your voice and things like that?"

_My throat hurt a lot for the next couple of weeks, even without trying to speak. I lost my voice after I was taken to the Government's scientists. I'm sure they have something to do with it. ___

____

____

Chopper thought it all was a strange story. How could someone's ability to speak just disappear like that? There had to be a reason for it. He had checked his friend's mouth once to see if he could find anything that could possibly prevent him from speaking, but he had found nothing. There weren't many options left that he could think of as an cause for Luffy's inability to speak.

The young doctor thought some more about the options before speaking. "My guess is that something's wrong with your vocal cords. I would like to take a look at them, but I don't have the equipment for that here. I can lend them from my personal teacher. Do you want me to do that?"

Luffy stared at the young doctor with wide eyes. The hope of ever speaking again flared up inside him.

_Do you think you can fix it? ___

____

____

"I can try, but I won't promise anything." The other teen said, not wanting to give his friend false hope. The other man jumped up from the bed and gave the doctor a hug. He didn't need to use his sign language to let the other know the offer was appreciated.

* * *

After leaving the infirmary, Luffy walked up the stairs to his and Zoro's room. He wanted to find his friend and tell him the good news and he had the feeling the man was in their bedroom.

He opened the door and indeed found his green-haired friend sitting against the wall on his bed. The man opened his eye when he heard the door open and his gaze immediately fell on the other's wing.

"Hey, I see that your cast is off." The man said in surprise. The teen smiled and nodded. The other smiled as well. "I'm glad your wing healed alright." Luffy grinned and signed at the man with his hands.

_Guess what! Chopper's going to try to fix my voice! ___

____

____

"That's great." Zoro said with a smile. The man was glad that there might be a way for his friend to speak again. The other smiled too before signing that he was going to tell the others. He turned around and was walking in the direction of the door when Zoro spoke up from his place on the bed.

"Luffy, next time you go with Chopper to the infirmary you need to tell me so I can go with you." The man said. The black-haired teen stopped walking and turned around. Luffy frowned as he moved his hands.

_Why? Do you not trust Chopper? ___

____

____

The green-haired man sighed. He should have known Luffy would take this the wrong way. "That's not it. I just don't want you to be without me when Chopper works on you. Just to be sure everything goes well." He said.

_So you don't trust him.. ___

____

____

"It's not like that, really. I just want to be careful. We've only known these people for a little over a month. Who knows what they will do to you when I'm not around? Especially when they're involved with equipment that has hurt you in the past." The man replied. It was clear he was referring to the medical equipment Chopper had in the infirmary.

Luffy glared at him and turned around, crossing his arms. So, Zoro didn't trust their friends? That's just stupid. He really didn't like the way Zoro talked about his friends.

The slightly older man sighed once again. "It's just.. I promised Ace I would look after you. I don't want to risk breaking that promise. You understand that, don't you?"

Luffy almost stopped breathing at the mention of his late brother. His wings, which he had unconsciously raised high in defence, lowered and he looked over his shoulder, arms still crossed, at the man sitting on the bed. He knew that Zoro was speaking the truth. The teen then sighed. He couldn't really blame his friend for being protective of him. Ace had been a good friend of Zoro and Luffy was sure the green-haired man didn't want to risk losing him too.

_Fine, I'll tell you next time. ___

____

____

The black-haired teen then continued his way out of the bedroom. He gave Zoro a small, somewhat sad smile before closing the door and vanishing out of sight. The other man was left alone in the room.

Even though Luffy hadn't said it, the swordsman knew the teen understood and had forgiven him for thinking badly about their friends. But honestly, 'not trusting' their friends wasn't the only reason Zoro wanted to be with Luffy whenever Chopper worked on him. It was for the doctor's safety as well. Not that he thought Luffy posed a threat to the other. He just wanted to make sure nothing bad happened to either of them.

The man closed his eye again before going back to sleep. He didn't have anything to do anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. It might be a bit boring at the moment, but I promise the real action will return in a few chapters. Also, that third piece of art is on my DeviantArt page (FireArrowAce). It's the first drawing I made with my drawing tablet. Go check it out if you have the time :)


	14. His voice

A few days had passed since Luffy's cast had been removed and this morning the bandages were taken off as well. Chopper was away at the moment to pick up the machine he needed to examine his friend's vocal cords. His personal teacher had given him permission to lend the machine for a few days.

Luffy was in the living room with Zoro, Usopp and Franky. The black-haired teen hadn't transformed back to his human form yet. Simply because he hadn't thought about it. After he had returned from the infirmary, he started a conversation with Usopp and totally forgot he could now transform back to his human form. He had been in this form for quite some time now and didn't even notice it until Usopp pointed it out.

"Hey Luffy," The curly-haired teen started, successfully getting his friend's attention. "Your wing is healed now, right? Don't you want to change back now?"

Luffy's eyes widen in realization and he stood up. Even though he had temporally forgotten about his appearance, Luffy was eager to turn back to his normal human form. He went to stand in the middle of the room before realizing something. He turned to face Usopp and signed.

_Shouldn't I wait for the others to come back? They might want to see it as well. I don't think I'll be transforming again any time soon. ___

____

The curly-haired teen thought about that before shaking his head. "They won't mind. We all know how much you want to look human again." He said with a soft smile.

After a few seconds the other black-haired teen nodded with a grin. Luffy then braced himself for what was to come and breathed in deeply.

Then, the transformation started.

Usopp, Franky and Zoro all watched as their friend slowly started to change. The long tail became shorter and shorter until it disappeared into the young man's lower back, leaving no evidence of its existence behind. The horns on Luffy's head disappeared in a similar way as they vanished in the teen's black hair.

It was a strange sight as the wings disappeared. First, two large cut-like openings appeared in the teen's back right beside the place where the wings were attached. It was weird to see no blood near such huge cuts. Then, the wings folded and pressed against the teen's back. The digits then shrinked in size before the wings pressed themselves into the openings. They retreated into Luffy's back using the large cuts. Once the wings were fully pressed inside, the skin on his back returned to its original form, closing the openings in the progress. The only evidence of something ever being there were the two scars on the teen's back.

Luffy's nails regrew as shorter and less pointy and his skin returned to the colour it used to have before he transformed into his other form. His eyes darkened to the colour his friends were used to and his ears weren't pointy anymore.

The whole transformation had lasted several minutes and now,

Luffy was a normal human again.

The black-haired teen looked himself over and once he saw that everything non-human was gone, he sighed in relief. He stretched his now sore back before going back to his place on the couch next to Zoro.

It was then that he noticed the shocked and amazed faces of Usopp and Franky. While he had transformed in their presence before to save Usopp, no one of his friends except Zoro had actually seen him change.

"That.. was.. so cool!" Usopp exclaimed as he jumped up in excitement. Franky just did what the others called his 'super' pose while yelling said word way too loud. Luffy, not really having expected that kind of reaction, just gave them a small smile. Honestly, he had never thought of his ability to transform as 'cool' or 'super'. Most of the time is was just painful.

At that moment, Chopper entered the room for a moment. The teen greeted them all before turning to Luffy. His eyes widen slightly when he noticed the change. "Hey, you transformed!" The younger teen exclaimed. Usopp grinned. "Yeah, you just missed it. It was awesome!"

Chopper pouted a little at having missed his friend's transformation. He then looked back at Luffy. "Anyway, I got the machine. I'm going to set it up in the infirmary. Do you want me to call you when it's ready?" He asked. The other nodded with a grin. The young doctor smiled and then left the room again.

Usopp and Franky both looked confused. "Machine? Wait, did I miss something?" The curly-haired teen asked. Luffy looked at him with a bright smile.

_Chopper's going to see if he can find out why I can't talk. And maybe then he can make me talk again! ___

____

The other teen looked at him in surprise. "Really? I hope he finds it. I really wonder what you sound like!" He replied with a smile. Luffy nodded at that. The little group then continued to talk about what they had been talking about before Luffy transformed. Luffy, though, was slowly getting lost in his own thoughts. Usopp had brought up a question which he hadn't thought about before.

'What _do _I sound like?'__

* * *

"Please sit down over here." Chopper instructed the other teen. Luffy sat down on the appointed chair next to the weird looking device. Zoro sat on one of the beds opposite of Luffy, keeping a good eye on him.

The young doctor turned the computer-like machine on and the screen lit up. He pushed a few buttons before picking up a tube-like tool from the table next to them. The tool was connected to the machine .

"This," Chopper said pointing at the tool. "Is a camera designed especially for this kind of procedures. It's used in hospitals to be able to look inside someone's throat or windpipe." He said. The doctor pushed a few more buttons on the machine before standing in front of the black-haired teen with the camera in his hand.

"Okay, so what is going to happen is that this camera is going through your nose down your throat to your windpipe. That is the easiest way to do it. This way we can take a good look at your vocal cords to see it anything's wrong with them." Chopper finished.

Luffy looked a bit uneasy as his friend explained what was going to happen. He didn't like anything to do with doctors, especially something like this. But he knew this might be the only way to find out what was wrong with his voice and maybe even fix his problem. So, without complain, he nodded and gave the doctor permission to do this.

Chopper noticed the troubled look on his friend's face and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I promise it won't hurt." He said to try and ease his patient's mind. Luffy breathed in deeply before giving the younger teen a shaky smile.

Taking that as a sign to start, Chopper placed the tool and carefully let the camera descend into Luffy's body. True to his friend's words, it didn't hurt. On the screen next to the doctor they could see the camera move downwards steadily through the teen's throat. The tool had a little light so everything was easy to see.

"We're now far enough, so we should be able to see your vocal cords. Let's see what.." Chopper trailed off as he eyed the screen with a worried and somewhat disturbed look on his face. Zoro, who was still sitting on one of the beds, stood up and walked closer to the screen to see what was going on. Luffy himself wasn't able to see what was happening as the doctor was subconsciously blocking his view. He didn't mind though. The idea of seeing inside his own body didn't sound that appealing.

"That's not normal, is it?" Zoro asked, though it was clear that he already knew the answer. Chopper didn't reply. He pushed a few buttons on the device before moving the tube inside Luffy's throat a little more down.

The doctor looked at the screen once again for several seconds. "What the hell.." He mumbled. "I've never seen anything like this. Who..?"

Zoro watched the screen calmly, but on the inside he was filled with rage. He clenched his fists. " _They _must have done that." He hissed. He took a deep breath before facing Chopper. "You can still fix this, can't you?"__

____

The doctor sighed. "Maybe. It has been like this for about two years, right?" The green-haired man nodded. Chopper bit his lip. "Well, it depends on if the vocal cords are still fully functional after I remove this." He said pointing at something on the screen.

Okay, now Luffy was curious. What was going on? He grabbed Chopper's shirt and pulled it a bit to get his attention. The doctor turned around to face him. The black-haired teen pointed at the screen. The other understood immediately and moved aside so the other teen could see what they were talking about.

To say Luffy was shocked might be an understatement. He didn't know much about human bodies, but he knew enough to know that that didn't belong there.

On the screen he could see his windpipe. And inside that was a.. pipe?

The black-haired teen blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes, but the image was still there. What was that thing doing inside of him? How did it get there?!

"..I guess we found the reason of your inability to speak." Chopper said. "This hollow pipe is lodged in between your vocal cords. Because of this, your vocal cords can't move and you are unable to talk."

Luffy stared at the object that was apparently inside of him. Was this really the reason he couldn't talk? That's so stupid. How didn't he notice that before? He surely would've felt that thing inside of him, right?

Chopper pushed a few buttons on the machine, one of them making a screenshot of what the camera was displaying. He then turned back to face Luffy. "I'm going to remove the camera now." He told him before taking a hold of the tool and slowly pulling it out of the black-haired teen's nose. Removing the camera went a lot easier and quicker than placing it inside.

Once out, the camera was placed on the table beside them. The doctor used the machine to send the picture of Luffy's inside to his phone before shutting down the device. He then turned back to face his patient.

"I'm going to take a closer look at the image of your windpipe. I need some time to re-examine everything to be sure it's safe to remove the pipe. After that we can see when to take it out. Okay?" He said. Luffy and Zoro nodded. The black-haired teen then gestured with his hands.

_When do you think you'll be able to remove it? ___

____

Chopper shrugged. "At first glance I didn't see anything that can prevent me from removing it. If I still haven't found anything dangerous after examining the image, the earliest I can do it is tomorrow." He answered. The other teen's eyes seemed to lit up at that.

_Will I be able to talk after that? ___

____

____

"That depends on whether your vocal cords are still functional or not. I can't promise anything, but I'd say there is a good chance you will speak again." The doctor said. The black-haired teen nodded, the excitement never leaving his eyes. He signed a quick 'Thank you' to Chopper before he exited the room together with Zoro, leaving the young doctor alone in the infirmary.

Chopper watched them leave before pulling out his phone and displaying the image of Luffy's inside on his screen. He would have to examine the image very closely to see if it was safe to do the procedure. After all, he didn't want to risk and hurt his friend even more.

He really hoped he would succeed in getting that thing out of Luffy.

* * *

Luffy could barely sleep that night. He was both worried and excited for the next day. Chopper was still busy when he went to bed, so he has no idea whether or not the pipe will be removed the next day.

While Chopper said he wasn't completely sure if he would be able to talk after the procedure, Luffy was confident he would. And with that came thoughts like 'Does my voice still sound the same?' and 'What if my voice sounds really weird now?'. It has been years since he last spoke, so it wouldn't be strange if his voice had changed.

When everyone gathered in the kitchen for breakfast that morning, the black-haired teen immediately went to Chopper. Knowing what the other teen wanted to know even before Luffy signed anything, Chopper smiled and spoke up. "I looked at it yesterday and I didn't find anything bad. So, just say when you want to do it." He told the other, making Luffy smile bright.

_You can do it today, right? ___

____

____

"Of course. If we start right after breakfast, then I should have enough time to explain everything and do the procedure." The doctor answered. Luffy gave him a thumbs-up as a sign that that was okay with him.

So, as promised, Chopper took Luffy and Zoro to the infirmary after they ate. There the young doctor went on to explain what was going to happen. When he finished, he looked at the other teen and asked one last time just to be sure.

"You're really alright with this, even though you're going to be fully anesthetized?" Although Luffy really didn't like the idea of temporarily being put to sleep, it was safer than only having a local anesthetic during the procedure and possibly freaking out while Chopper tried to do his job. The black-haired teen nodded.

The doctor got the syringe he had prepared and brought it to Luffy's arm. The black-haired teen looked at Zoro who stood in front of him as he was injected with the anesthetic. The younger man gave his friend a reassuring smile. Chopper had told them that Zoro had to leave the room during the procedure. While Luffy didn't have a problem with being alone with Chopper, Zoro still didn't really like the idea of a doctor being alone with his friend. Even though the doctor in question was a friend and only wanted to help, after all the things other 'doctors' had done to Luffy the green-haired man couldn't help but feel at least _slightly _worried.__

____

____

It didn't take too long for the black-haired teen's eyes to close. After about ten minutes, Luffy was completely dead to the world. The doctor ushered Zoro out of the room just before he started the procedure. The green-haired man didn't really know how long it was going to take nor what he should do in the meantime. Zoro finally settled on leaning against the wall next to the infirmary door. He didn't want to be too far away in case something happened.

About ten minutes of just standing there passed before Usopp entered the hallway. The dark-haired teen was holding some sort of package in his hands. He took notice of the other man in the hall and approached Zoro.

"Hey Zoro, why are you standing there?" The teen asked. The older man gestured to the door beside him, making the other frown. "The infirmary? Is Luffy in there? Didn't he and Chopper do that thing with the machine yesterday?"

Zoro looked at him in slight confusion. "What do you mean? Didn't he tell you what was going to happen today?" The man asked. Usopp shook his head. The green-haired man sighed. Luffy had probably forgotten to tell the rest of their friends in all his excitement.

"Chopper's going to see if he can fix Luffy's voice today." He explained. The other's eyes widen in realization and a smile lit up the teen's face. "Really? So he found what the problem was. That's great!" He exclaimed. "When will they be done?" Zoro shrugged. "I don't know. They started not long ago, so it'll probably take a while." He answered. Usopp nodded in understanding.

Zoro's eye then fell on the package the other was carrying. "What's that?" He asked. The teen followed his gaze. "Oh, t-that's just something me and Franky are working on. I can't tell you what it is though. It's a secret." He answered with a nervous grin. Zoro raised an eyebrow but didn't question further.

"Well, I gotta go! See you later!" Usopp said before running off with his package. The other man watched him go before shrugging. It wasn't the first time that the curly-haired teen was dragging his 'secret inventions' with him through the house.

Zoro glanced at the infirmary door beside him and sighed. This was probably going to take a while..

* * *

About an hour and a half later the door to the infirmary opened. Chopper walked out with a somewhat troubled look on his face. The doctor saw Zoro standing next to the door and gestured for him to come inside. When the green-haired man stepped inside the room, his eye immediately fell on the still asleep form of Luffy.

The doctor noticed his gaze. "Don't worry about him, he's completely fine. He should be waking up any minute now." He told the older man. Zoro turned his attention back to the doctor. "How did it go?" He asked.

"To be honest, it went smoother than I thought it would go. I was done fairly quickly." Chopper answered. "The object was easier to remove than expected. I didn't even have to make any major incisions." He continued as he made his way over to the small table. Zoro followed him and looked over the younger man's shoulder at the bloodied pipe that laid there.

The pipe was about half a foot long and seemed to be made of plastic. There was a metal ring in the middle of the pipe. Next to the object laid four small pins. Judging from the four circular cut-off edges on the metal ring, the pins were once attached to the metal part.

"These," Chopper pointed at the cut-off pins. "Were embedded into the tissue of his windpipe. I had to cut them off to remove the pipe. The pipe itself was pressed tightly against his windpipe, but the material the pipe is made of is very flexible which made it easy to remove.

When we found out what the problem was yesterday, I thought for a moment that it might have been an accident. That the pipe broke off during a procedure or something like that and that whoever did that forgot to remove it. But seeing that it was attached to Luffy's inside with pins proved that it was done on purpose."

The green-haired man wasn't really surprised at that. Those people had done horrible things to Luffy, so why the hell wouldn't they do something like this?

"Do you know what this is for?" Zoro asked as he pointed at the metal ring around the pipe. It seemed a bit out of place. The young doctor bit his lip. "No, I do not. But if you look at this," Chopper grabbed the pipe and showed Zoro the hollow passage. He then shook the object lightly and some soft metallic sounds could be heard coming from inside the object. When Zoro looked closely inside the pipe, he could see some small plates move a little at the place where the metal was attached to the pipe.

"If I would guess I'd say those small plates can close if someone would to give off some kind of signal. Maybe with a remote of some sorts. But that sounds kind of cruel, don't you think? If those plates closed while the pipe was still inside Luffy's windpipe, he would sufficate to death."

If Zoro was angry before, he now was furious. He stared at the pipe, frozen. Who the hell did this? Why would they put that thing inside of him?! So they could easily kill him if he did something wrong?!

He really was going to cut a lot of people down during the next Government attack.

"I-I'm really n-not sure about it though! I'll have to ask Franky about it!" Chopper quickly stuttered as he saw the murderous look in the other man's eyes. Zoro nodded in understanding, though the angry look on his face didn't fade away completely. The older man then looked back at his sleeping friend. "Do.. do you think he will be able to talk now?" Zoro asked. The teen beside him smiled.

"I checked his vocal cords after I removed the pipe. They didn't seem too badly damaged, so I don't see why he wouldn't be able to talk." Chopper answered. A small smile appeared on the other's face. "That's good."

Luffy chose that moment to wake up. He groggily opened his eyes and moved his hand towards his neck. While the young doctor hadn't done anything too major to his windpipe, having the pipe removed wasn't as painless as just having a camera shoved down his throat. Zoro and Chopper were by his side in moments. The doctor did some routine checks to see if he was completely okay.

After a few minutes, the black-haired teen slowly sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed while Chopper tried to convince him to rest some more. Although more rest did sound like a good idea, Luffy just _had to know _.__

____

____

_Did you remove it? ___

____

____

The other teen nodded and showed Luffy the pipe. He looked at the object with both shock and disgust. The doctor explained everything to the teen much like he had to Zoro. Honestly, Luffy didn't really care about how Chopper removed it or how it was stuck inside of him. He only cared about one thing. And he really couldn't wait for the doctor to finish his explination.

Literally, because he interrupted the other teen's talk with some quick gestures.

_Did it work? Can I talk now? ___

____

____

Chopper, though slightly annoyed at the interruption, answered anyway. "Yes, I think it worked. But before you begin to try out your voice, you must understand that it might take a while before your voice returns to how it was. You haven't talked in a very long time, so your vocal cords-"

The doctor continued to talk, but the black-haired teen just nodded at whatever he said without really paying attention. He could talk again, and that's all that mattered. He thanked his friend for the help, who in turn shot down his gratitude with a blush. The teen then stood up from the bed and made his way out of the infirmary together with Zoro.

Chopper closed the door behind them before looking back at the object he had removed from his friend's windpipe. He almost felt sick at the thought that someone put it there on purpose. And if those small plates really are there for the reason he thought they were, he couldn't even think of what could have happened if he hadn't been able to remove it.

The doctor sighed. He felt like his stress level had increased a lot these past two weeks. He and his friends already had to be prepared for an attack of the Government every minute of the day, but now they also had to worry about the health of their black-haired friend.

Because who knows _what else _they put inside Luffy's body?__

* * *

____

____

Luffy flopped down on his bed with sigh while his green-haired friend sat down on his own bed opposite of Luffy's. The teen turned on his back and for a moment considered to take a nap, but he wasn't really feeling up to that to be honest. He signed at his older friend to get his attention.

_Hey Zoro, ___

____

____

The man looked up. "Yeah?" He asked. He had a fairly good idea of what was on the other's mind. Luffy struggled to find the right words for a few seconds before gesturing again.

_What if my voice sounds really weird now? Or what if I still can't speak? Then all Chopper's work would have been for nothing. ___

____

____

Zoro sighed. His friend could be a real worrywart if he wanted to be. He moved to sit more upright before speaking.

"There's only one way to find out, isn't there? So what if your voice sounds weird? I think everyone will be happy to hear you speak, no matter how your voice sounds. And if you still aren't able to talk, then you'll just have to keep using your sign language. Nothing will change than before today, if that's what you're worried about."

Luffy stared at him before smiling. Zoro did have a point. Having made up his mind, the dark-haired teen sat up and turned to face his friend. He didn't really know how to talk (he just didn't remember), but he hoped that it would just come to him like natural.

_Okay, I'm going to try. ___

* * *

____

____

Hours past and soon dinnertime had arrived. Sanji, who had cooked like usual, called everyone to come eat. One by one everyone entered the kitchen. Zoro and Luffy were the last to join the rest at the table.

As soon as the two entered the room, Luffy walked over to Chopper and tapped his arm to get his attention. The doctor momentarily stopped his conversation with Robin to look at his other friend. The black-haired teen gave a bright smile as he signed something at the younger teen. Chopper's eyes widen slightly before he, too, smiled. Luffy gave a few more gestures, to which his friend nodded, before going to his place at the table and sitting down next to Zoro.

The dark-haired teen gave Zoro a look and the other man gave a nod in return. The man turned to face the rest of their little group and spoke. "Hey guys, can I have your attention for a minute?" The green-haired man asked, successfully getting everyone's attention. The group of friends, except Luffy and Chopper, looked at Zoro in confusion. He normally wasn't the type to ask for everyone's attention.

"Luffy has something to tell you all." He said. Luffy nodded in confirmation. He got slightly nervous when all eyes were automatically turned on him. The teen took a deep breath before opening his mouth.

"I-I got m-my v-voice back."

Though his message was heavily stuttered and his voice was rasp due not having used it in two years, everyone heard him speak loud and clear. Their first reaction was silence. Just shocked silence. Then, after about ten long seconds in which Luffy felt very uncomfortable under everyone's stares, everyone's faces lit up with smiles and grins.

"Oh my god Luffy! That's amazing! "

"That's super bro!"

"That's great Luffy!"

Luffy beamed at all the positive reactions. The two of them had practiced non-stop after they arrived in their room. At first, only a few strange noises had left his mouth and it hurt as well. But after a while of trying to formulate something understandable, he finally was able to say something that wasn't only weird sounding noise, but an actual word. After that, Luffy began to string more and more words together with the help of Zoro. While he hadn't been able to say a full sentence without stuttering yet, he was really happy with his progress.

Sanji came up behind Luffy and placed a plate of food in front of the teen. The black-haired teen looked up in confusion since the cook normally gave the ladies their food first. "Here, you've earned it." The blond man said as he ruffled the other's hair a bit. "I hope you're not of the loud kind though." Sanji continued as he went to serve the other's at the table. "We have enough of those already." He said as he glared at most of the men at the dinner table.

Luffy smiled, and some could swear they could see something like mischief in the teen's eyes. Zoro couldn't help but grin at that.

"Oh man, you're in for something.."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter I re-uploaded from Fanfiction. The next chapter will be posted here at the same time as on Fanfiction. The chapter is almost ready, so please be patient :)
> 
> I decided to cover everything about the return of Luffy's voice in one chapter instead of making 2 seperate ones like I originally intended to do. I just wanted to get over with it.  
> The part about the camera inside Luffy's throat might seem a bit weird, but I tried my best to explain it as good as possible (English still isn't my first language). I actually had this kind of procedure done to me once, so I thought 'Hey, why not use this method in my story?' So that's what I did. Sorry if it was a bit vague.  
> All that aside, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	15. One problem solved, another one appeared

Sanji smiled slightly as he wrote down a new idea for an interesting recipe. He had a day off work so he had some free time today. He could now concentrate since the house was quiet for once. Usopp and Chopper were at school, Nami, Brook and Franky were working, Robin was reading a book somewhere in the house, Zoro was probably sleeping and Luffy hadn't bothered him at all during the last two hours or so.

In other words, he finally had some peace and quiet-

"Sanji!"

..He shouldn't have thought that.

The cook sighed and put his notebook down somewhere safe. He then turned around to see an energetic teen run into the room. 

"I told you not to run in the kitchen." Sanji muttered. Luffy only grinned as he sat on one of the chairs at the dinner table. Knowing the teen as long as he did the cook didn't even have to ask what the other wanted from him. The blond man opened a cupboard, grabbed a bag of chips and threw it at his friend. The black-haired teen caught it with ease and opened it to munch on the chips.

"So, what have you been up to? You weren't bothering Robin again, were you?" Luffy shook his head in response and stopped eating for a moment to give an actual answer. "T-there was a good movie on TV. I was watching it with Zoro but he f-fell asleep."

The older man nodded in understanding. "Let me guess, the movie was over and you decided to come bother me for a snack." The teen continued to eat, which was enough confirmation. The blond man leaned back against the counter sighed. Luffy was so predictable sometimes.

It had been about three weeks since Luffy had regained his voice. The teen had practiced a lot with his voice and made a lot of progress. Especially in the first week, Luffy was so glad he had his voice back that he continually talked most of the time. It could get quite annoying, but everyone could understand why he did it. He was now able to speak in full sentences without too much stuttering. 

One thing that the others had noticed about the teen was that he sometimes still used his hands for sign language while speaking out loud. When asked about it he said he hadn't even noticed. Apparently, his body was so used to using his hands for talking that he still did it even now it wasn't necessary anymore. Once or twice, Luffy even _forgot _that he could speak and used sign language instead of his voice.__

____

Other than Luffy's rapid improvements, the last few weeks had been quite uneventful. The group had been attacked by the Government twice, once in the first week and once in the second, but other than that nothing really important happened. Since the Government had left them alone for over a week now, the friends couldn't help but hope they had given up on arresting them. But of course, they all knew how stubborn the Government was. They were probably just preparing a new ‘big attack’.

The sound of the garbage bin opening and closing snapped Sanji back to reality. He turned to look at the other person in the room only to find him gone. The empty bag of chips could be seen sticking out from the bin. The blond man sighed.

‘Dammit Luffy, that was the second bag of chips you emptied this day.’

* * *

It was begin afternoon just after lunch. As soon as everyone stood up to leave the room, Usopp had asked Luffy to wait for him in the living room before running off without saying anything else, leaving a confused Luffy behind. Still, the black-haired teen did what him was told and went to sit on one of the couches in said room together with some of his other friends. 

A few minutes later both Usopp and Franky entered the room. The older man was holding some kind of black object in his arms.

The curly-haired teen stood in front of Luffy with his hands on his hips. "We have something for you, but you have to change into your other form before we can give it to you." He said with a big smile on his face. The other teen looked at him with confusion. "Can't you give it t-to me without me needing to transform?" Usopp shook his head. Luffy was silent for a second before he took off his shirt and went to stand in the middle of the room where more space was.

The transformation took a few minutes. Luffy took it slow since he didn't want to hurt himself by changing too fast. He was also careful that his tail didn't rip a hole in his pants but rather grew over his waistband. Much like with the other time he transformed, the air in the room got colder and a sense of fear appeared, but the house's inhabitants ignored it as best as they could. They knew they didn't have to be afraid. He had stayed in this form for a little while when his wing was recovering, so they were sort of used to it.

Once done, Luffy looked at his friend waiting for whatever the other teen wanted to give him. Usopp, though still in awe from the transformation, turned to Franky and retrieved the object from then other man's hands. He then turned to face his black-haired friend.

"I uh.. still wanted to thank you for saving me that one time and.. Well, I made a little something for you. I know something happened to one of your wings. I talked with Chopper about it and then I asked Franky for help to make this for you." Usopp sounded a bit nervous like he didn't know if what he was doing would make the other happy. The teen then unfolded the object in his hands, which was apparently some kind of cloth, and showed it to Luffy.

The black cloth's form was somewhat triangular, and it had a few straps at the edges. As he stared at the object, Luffy began to recognize the shape. It almost looked the same as..

The curly-haired teen walked closer to the other's left wing and held the cloth next to the gap where Luffy was missing most of the wing membrane. "With Chopper’s help I found a material closely resembling that of your wing and then me and Franky worked on making this for you. I hope it can replace what you once lost." 

Luffy looked with wide eyes as Usopp began to attach the cloth to his wing. Chopper helped him move the useless leftover membrane out of the way so the straps could be put on. When everything was ready and Luffy stretched his wing out, he saw that it was just the right size.

In all honesty, Luffy couldn't comprehend that someone would do something like this for him, especially when it benefits his other form. But he remembered the conversation he had with Chopper a while back. The younger teen had told him he shouldn’t change himself just because he was different and that everyone loved him just the way he was. Now he believed those words just a little more.

"And that's not everything. Look at this!" Usopp said excitedly as he tilted Luffy’s wing slightly to show the other teen something he somehow hadn’t noticed before. Luffy's eyes widen even more as he laid his eyes on the image displayed on the new part of his wing. It was a skull and crossbones with a strawhat on top.

Usopp rubbed the back of his head. "I thought the cloth looked a bit plain so I drew this on it. I noticed how you preferred to watch pirate movies over other ones on TV, so I thought you would like this. I can always remove it if you want-" He was cut off by Luffy throwing his arms around him in a hug.

"Thank you Usopp."

The other teen's shocked face changed into a smile and he patted his friend's back as he remembered that he had done almost the exact same thing after Luffy had saved him.

"I'm glad you like it."

After a moment Luffy stepped away from his friend to look at his wing again. He smiled. It looked really cool. The teen raised his wings and did a test flap with his wing. As soon as he did that a crash could be heard behind him. He looked back to see that he had knocked over a glass that had stood nearby. He smiled sheepishly.

"Oops.."

Nami, who had been in the room with them, sighed as she bent down to grab the broken glass. "I think it's safer if you do that outside." She said. She didn't want to risk breaking anymore glasses and waste money buying new ones. Luffy nodded and took off to the backyard, Usopp following him closely with a grin. 

Outside, the black-haired teen first stretched his wings out. He hadn’t done that for a while and they were a bit stiff. The wind blew against his wings and he sighed in satisfaction at the feeling. 

"Are you going to try to fly?" Usopp asked. The other teen shrugged. "Maybe. I-it's been a while since I've last done that. I don't know i-if I still can." He replied, a hint of sadness in his voice as he remembered the last time he had flown. His friend smiled reassuringly. "You'll be fine. And if not, I'm sure you will be able to fly after a bit of practice." 

The other teen nodded and spread his wings out as far as they could before flapping them experimentally. The grass beneath him waved to the beat of his wings and fallen off leaves on the ground flew up into the air. The teen moved his wings faster before checking his left wing to see if the cloth could withstand the air pressure, which it did. In his excitement to see that Usopp and Franky's invention was strong enough, Luffy did an especially strong flap with his wings that lifted him a few inches up from the ground. 

Startled by his sudden hovering, the teen let himself fall back to the ground and stopped moving his wings. He looked at Usopp with shocked, wide eyes like he hadn't expected to _actually _float in the air. His friend only gave him a thumbs-up. His shock was quickly replaced by excitement and Luffy had to stop himself from giving his friend another bone-crushing hug.__

____

____

He used to enjoy flying so much when he was a kid and despite not liking his other form, he still thought flying was the one positive thing about not being completely human. During all the years he had been stuck in that place he hadn't been able to fly at all. He didn't think he would ever fly again, especially after his wing got damaged. But his friends had given him the ability and freedom to fly again and for that he was grateful.

"Thank you, Usopp." Luffy said again. His friend grinned. "It was the least I could do after you saved me. Just promise me you will come to me when you have problems with the cloth. I can always change things about it to make it more comfortable." He replied. The other teen nodded with a smile.

Luffy spread his wings and began to move them once again. After flapping his wings a few times he made a stronger beat, this time intentional, which lifted him up into the air. He tried to hover in the air as long as he could, but after not really being used for quite some time his wings got sore really fast and he had to drop down after only a few seconds. Still satisfied with the result, the teen tucked his wings against his back before facing his curly-haired friend. There was still one question to be answered.

"Do I need to take the cloth off when I change back?" Luffy asked. Usopp flicked his fingers. "That's something me and Franky weren't really sure about. The cloth is made of a highly elastic material that can shrink to roughly the size of my forearm and still be very thin. Since your wings seem to shrink so they can fit inside your body, I think it wouldn't be a problem for the cloth to shrink as well and fit inside with the rest of the wing. But of course, it’s up to you to decide if you do that. It’s your body, after all."

The other teen looked back at his wings in thought. Whether it was going to work or not, he could at least _try _to change back with the cloth still attached. Besides, his back had endured a lot in the past, so another experiment probably wouldn't do too much damage.__

____

____

When he changed back to his human form, the teen tried not to think too much about the extra attachment to his wing. Surprisingly, he didn't really feel any difference when his wings entered his body. Only when he was fully changed did he feel the difference. The left side of his back felt like it was slightly 'fuller' than it had been before. Luffy moved around a bit and, even though he could feel the cloth inside of him, he didn't feel any discomfort. He would probably have to get used to the feeling, but other than that everything seemed okay.

"I guess that answers that question." Usopp said from beside him. Luffy grinned and gave the other teen a one-armed hug. “I really can’t thank you a-and Franky enough for this. Y-you have no idea how much this means to m-me.” He said with a slight stutter in his voice. Usopp just smiled. “Like I said before, it’s the least I can do after you saved my life.” He said as they made their way back to the house.

On their way back inside the two teens passed Zoro who stood in the doorway. He had apparently been watching them from a distance. The older man shot Luffy a knowing look, which the black-haired boy returned with a bright smile. They both knew that this was a big step in the right direction.

* * *

“..aaanndd 30!” Luffy yelled as he opened his eyes.

“Ready or not, h-here I come!” 

Taking the stairs to the second floor, the black-haired teen strained his ears to try and hear even the faintest noise. It was awfully quiet in the house. At the top of the stairs Luffy went to the right, in the direction of the bedrooms.

Luffy always enjoyed playing hide and seek. Well, he enjoyed any game they played, but hide and seek was one of his favorites. While he preferred to hide, he didn’t mind seeking his friends when it was his turn. For a reason he did not know, he sometimes could suddenly _feel _where the other teens were and was able to find them without any trouble.__

____

____

He called it a ‘mystery power’.

He opened the door to the nearest room and looked inside. Nothing seemed out of place, but that didn’t mean anything. “Come out, come out wherever you are.” The teen yelled quietly with a small laugh. The room stayed quiet. “You can’t hide f-from me.” He said trying to get any kind of response from his friends. He was about to move a drawer aside to see if one of his friends was hiding there when a loud bang and a yell from downstairs caught his attention.

Distracted, Luffy quickly abandoned the piece of furniture and ran out of the room. He jumped down the flight of stairs without effort and ran at high speed in the direction of the sound. There, in the kitchen, he found Chopper looking at him with wide eyes while the younger teen desperately tried to dispose of some fallen pots and pans on the floor.

“Found you!” Luffy yelled as he lunged over the table at the other. Chopper squealed and ran around the dinner table with Luffy hot on his heels. Unfortunately, the younger teen wasn’t able to escape his friend. “How are you so fast?!” He cried out as the other tapped him on the shoulder, effectively marking him as the next seeker. Luffy grinned and shrugged. 

‘All right. One down, one to go!’ The black-haired teen thought as he walked out of the room after instructing Chopper to stay in the kitchen. He was back at the base of the stairs when his ‘mystery power’ kicked in. He could very clearly feel Usopp’s presence upstairs, one room away from where he was searching before.

Luffy wasted no time and ran up the stairs to the room he knew his friend was in. He loudly swung the door open, earning a sharp intake of breath from underneath the only bed in the room. The teen kept himself from laughing as he faked not noticing the hiding teen. Then, in an effort to scare his friend, Luffy suddenly dropped himself to the ground in front of the bed and yelled in Usopp’s face, who in return screamed his head off. In an automatic reflex Usopp’s hand shot forwards and hit Luffy in the face. The other teen shot backwards and bursted out in laughter while holding his nose.

“God dammit Luffy! Don’t scare me like that!” Usopp yelled as he emerged from underneath the bed. Luffy wasn’t able to reply as he continued to roll around on the floor while laughing his ass off. The other couldn’t help but join in once the initial scare had worn off.

After about a minute or two, the teens had regained their breath. Usopp, who was standing held his hand out for Luffy to take it so he could pull the other off of the ground. The other teen smiled and took the hand. Once they were both standing again, Luffy turned to face Usopp and grinned.

“Chopper’s it!”

* * *

It was early afternoon on a Thursday. The only ones at home were Luffy, Zoro, Franky, Brook and Nami. Everyone was just doing their own thing until their alarm suddenly went off. Franky had installed this alarm a few weeks ago since none of them wanted to risk being oblivious to another attack from the Government. The alarm gave them enough time to react to the approaching danger.

Since Franky had built all kinds of weapons in the wall of their house, the group of friends rarely had to fight. And while it would be much easier for Franky to just fire at the enemy from inside using remote control, the friends always went outside to see what the Government was up to. They weren't cruel, so they would always give the guards a chance to change their mind. That and Franky didn’t really like ruining their garden with his cannons.

Both Zoro and Luffy jumped up at the alarm. Franky quickly entered the room after leaving his work space and the three of them made their way to the backdoor. They could hear footsteps upstairs, and soon enough Brook and Nami were by their side as well. The friends opened the door and walked outside only to be met with a sight they hadn't seen before and which made them a bit suspicious.

There were barely any guards standing in front of them. However, it didn't look like they were giving up as they all still held guns, cuffs, nets and other capture gear. Their confusion only increased when one of the guards walked forwards and placed a camera on a tripod in front of them. He attached a small speaker before stepped back in line.

Just what was going on?

Before any of them could say anything, a voice sounded from the speaker. It was the voice of a man. A man who sounded like he was some sort of leader. Both Zoro and Luffy tensed up as they realized who the owner of that voice was.

"I gave you enough chances to surrender to us, but you just wouldn't listen. Now, you will have to deal with the consequences." The man's voice said. Zoro felt the hair on his neck raise up at the tone of the man's voice. He was about to reply to the man, but before he could say anything Luffy, who was just as shocked and angry as him, yelled at the camera from beside him.

"Just give it up, Akainu! You won't get me back!" To an outsider it would've sounded like the teen was completely filled with rage. Only Zoro and the rest of his friends could hear the fear and panic in his voice. He was scared. And Zoro could understand why. If Akainu himself was behind this attack, whatever plan the Government has has that had a high risk of success. That man wasn't someone who would fight without knowing he would win.

"That's not for you to decide, D-3. You are property of the Government and I can do whatever I want with you." The teen's friends could see a shiver run down Luffy's spine at the name D-3. The ‘name’ certainly didn’t sound nice. Their anger only increased when the man called Luffy his 'property'. To call another person your property was absolutely disgusting.

Luffy bit his lip. "I'm not your p-property. Not anymore. Just leave us alone!" He said. He could almost _hear _the other man smile behind the camera. The teen frowned. He really hated that man.__

____

____

"It doesn't matter what you say. What _I _want is happening right now whether you like it or not, even though I’m not able to be present myself. For that I have sent my best man to take you down."__

____

____

The friends almost instinctively set a step backwards as a man emerged from the small group of guards. His attire was nothing like they had ever seen any other member of the Government wear, which made them wonder how they hadn't noticed him before.

The man stopped a few yards away from them and tilted his hat as a greeting, but the cold look on the man's face didn't promise anything nice. The man scanned the small group of people in front of him before his gaze stopped on Luffy. As the two of them locked eyes, the man smirked.

"I can sense you’re quite strong. It's been a while since I had a good fight." The man's voice was smooth but ice cold and void of emotions at the same time. The guards behind him backed up like they expect something bad to happen. The group of friends did the same. All except Luffy. The teen was frozen in place as he watched the man in front of him. There was something so awfully familiar about this man, but he couldn’t quite place it yet.

Slowly, the atmosphere around them got heavier and darker in a familiar way. The weather seemed to change as wind started blowing harder and the sky filled with clouds. A sense of fear filled everyone and the friends then knew that this was a _very bad situation. ___

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____

Luffy watched with wide eyes as the wind blew blond strands of hair away from the man's face. Piercing blue eyes stared back at him and the teen almost choked on air. He felt himself tremble, but not in fear. He wasn’t even sure _what _he was feeling right now.__

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____

Then, almost like an explosion, the dark atmosphere expanded and got almost unbearable. Some guards even dropped their equipment and fled out of fear for what was about to happen, making the small group of people even smaller.

The friends could only watch in shock as two big, dark blue wings ripped themselves out of the man's back without any kind of effort. A pointed tail appeared from behind the man and moved threateningly in Luffy’s direction. When the man took off his top hat to give his curly horns room to grow even bigger, the available light illuminated the man’s face so they could see the large scar covering half of it. The man took off his cloves to reveal his sharp claws before grinning at Luffy and showing his sharp teeth.

"Why don't we get started, D-3?" 

Franky, Brook and Nami were at a loss for what was happening in front of them. Who was this man? Why was he like Luffy? They looked at their green-haired for answers, but he was just as confused as they were. 

_Something wasn't right _, that was all Zoro could think of. He knew the Government. He had worked with them for _years _, so why had he never even _heard _about this man?______

_____ _

_____ _

Looking at Luffy, he could tell that the younger man struggling to keep himself together. The teen was trembling with too many emotions and tears were in his eyes. It was clear that Luffy knew who this person was.

Luffy opened his mouth to say something, but nothing more than a sob came out. He tried again, twice, all with the same result. Shuddering breaths left his body as he struggled to keep himself together, tears slowly beginning to flow down his cheeks. After all this time, it was _him _. It was really him!__

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____

Friends and enemies alike held their breath as they waited for something, _anything _to happen. Then, the silence was broken. Despite the weather that was raging by now, Luffy's soft voice was awfully loud on the soon-to-be battlefield. He only said one word. One _name _. A name only he knew the meaning of.____

_____ _

___ _

_____ _

"Sabo?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For someone who hates cliffhangers I do a lot myself hehehe..
> 
> Sorry if you find it a bit annoying that there are so many time skips. I just don't know how to write weeks worth of content between events.
> 
> And that camera thing with speaker for Akainu at the end is kinda meant to be a Den Den Mushi, but I didn’t want to place a random snail in my story, so it became a regular camera.
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Fanfiction.net


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